What made the big disparity in wealth?

Price inflation will exist no matter what economic system you use. It is not a "problem." It is a function of economics.

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Once again, you lack any basis for Obama being responsible for the increase in inequality.

So conservative strategy seems to be.. (*)(*)(*)(*) the country up, then blame it on the liberals when they get in power..

 

Not a single policy of Obama's has negatively impacted the deficit or debt. Name one.

Convenient but misguided argument. Salaries are absolutely based on how much profit a company earns.

 

Nice. This is come from a resident Wall Street's apologist.

Carry on.

 

Makes an excuse for Reagan, but admits Reagan created way more debt than Obama.

 

This makes absolutely no sense. Humans consume goods and services naturally, so what do you mean by "creating more consumers"? If all we had to do was "drive more sales", then why not just spend $100 trillion on stimulus?

 

That's not true at all.

Clearly you have no idea what you're talking about.

 

The salary of a given individual is based upon multiple variables, not just a company's profit. Why the need to oversimplify so much?

 

That graph contains no inflationary spikes? I certainly need my eyes checked.

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Nothing in my statement says any differently. Salaries are absolutely affected by profit line. If the company's profit is marginal, salaries aren't going up in a hurry.

 

It does, but there are corresponding periods of deflation to offset those spikes and over the long-run there appears to be a slight deflationary trend. Of course, this is something that should require no explanation to someone that actually understands economics. The idea that inflation is unavoidable has no basis whatsoever in economics or any other discipline for that matter.

Just compare that to the post-fed era and maybe you'll see the difference...

 

Yea, why do you think we left gold standard? Weak economy causes DEFLATION when you are pegged to precious metal. The Fed can mitigate that post 1971.

 

LOL, so the pattern established by "trickle-down" after only 3 Presidents isn't enough to render a judgement on it, but somehow it is after 4?

In other words you can't, because many of the systemic problems that led to the mortgage industry collapsing started before Bush was President. But I agree with the "no need" sentiment, as partisan Democrat Party cheerleaders rarely have anything objective to contribute, and we are seeing that now very clearly.

In terms of debt accumulated, obviously.

If he was, the left would like him. They don't.

You're attempting to make the case that since Walmart's EBIT is larger than Costco's, they can afford to pay workers more. Since when is Costco the standard? Companies need to keep EBIT near Costco's level or else they need to pay more for their labor?

Because our bloated bureaucracy and progressive tax system is full of loopholes that these companies use to their advantage. Small companies cannot do this, keeping them at a perpetual disadvantage. Saint Obama hasn't done anything about this, despite his rhetoric. GE and a number of other companies have done the same thing.

Several Republican candidates ran on abolishing the IRS and reforming the tax code to a flat tax in 2012. This would have solved the problem of corporate welfare. Democrats weren't interested and clearly prefer the current system. Keeping the IRS bureaucracy alive is worth billions in corporate welfare that you are currently complaining about. Own it, it's yours.

It doesn't get more severe each year.


As you can clearly see, between 1986 and 1987, incomes moved closer together. Between 1989 and 1994 incomes moved closer together. You're wrong again.

So we can credit the good economy of the 90's to Reagan? Or just the increased wealth inequality that happened during Clinton's term?

This is like Animal Farm. Something good happens, it's because of Napoleon's brilliant leadership. Something bad happens, it's because of that evil Snowball.

 

You're trying to change the subject. You claimed that inflation cannot be avoided in any economic system, but that is clearly false and not supported by any economic school of thought. Whether or not it's good or bad is a normative contention and has nothing to do with the facts. Japan is proof that your assertion is flat-out wrong.

 

It can't be avoided. This graph also shows inflation....

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The true left doesn't like Obama either. Hence, Obama is not a Marxist (that is why they don't like him) despite the vicious Marxist and socialist rhetoric sent his way.

 

When discussing the numbers 1, 2, and 4; it is not invalid to mention the number 3. Choosing to exclude 25% of the data is called cherry picking and is a logical fallacy.

Wait... Are you saying that Bush can't be blamed for the economy tanking on his watch because the "systemic problems" began prior to his administration, but Clinton can be blamed for a trend of wealth inequality that resulted from a "systemic problems" that were implemented prior to his administration?

In what universe is this level of hypocrisy valid?

And what do you believe contributed to that?

Hasty generalization much?

You're partially correct. I am saying that since Walmart's EBIT is higher than Costco's - and Costco is performing well - that Walmart can afford to pay it's workers more.

I am using Costco as a point of comparison to illustrate that a drop in Walmart's EBIT would not destroy the company. I am not saying that all companies should use Costco as a standard (that assertion is a straw man).

I am saying that companies shouldn't be subsidized by taxpayer dollars, and that it is wrong to demonize the individual worker while glorifying the company that created and benefits from the situation.

Once again, why support the companies that manipulate the system to line their own pockets with taxpayer dollars that they haven't earned while demonizing the individuals who are being victimized by those same companies?

Please illustrate how a flat tax rate would have prevented companies from underpaying workers and driving them onto welfare systems to survive.

Cherry pick snapshots all you want, that chart makes it clear that the disparity is a trend that started in 1980.
Even your cherry picked timeframes are false, given that in '92 and '94 income disparity was again increased.

I agree. I wish you'd stop blaming Clinton for an issue that was clearly caused a decade before his administration.

 

There are hundreds of books on consumer creation. If you are actually interested, I advise picking a couple up.
The simple version is this:

- Imagine you have a small business that produces and sells "widgets". A few people have invested money in your business (ie: shareholders) and would like to see your business grow so that their investment gets more valuable.
- Let's assume you get about 3000 orders per month, employ 100 people, and make about $90,000 net profit every month.
- Let's say that the 100 people you employ each get paid about $10.38 per hour, so each of these employees costs you about $1800 per month.
- Now let's say that you (the CEO) suddenly get an extra $100,000 through some combination of tax breaks.
- Your sales haven't increased, so you already have enough people to fill your customers' orders... No reason to hire anyone new.
- Paying your existing people more will only increase your production costs, and they're already doing what you need them to do so there's no profit in doing that...
- You're most likely to tell your shareholders that your business made an extra $100K this month, and accept a raise for "leading the company through these trying times".

Now, if that $100K was not given to your company, but the government made sure that all 100 of your employees got an extra $1000 each:
- If this was a one-shot stimulus package, many of them might choose to save the money and make it last.
- If it was as a result of tax breaks, they would know this extra money could be a reoccurring event and would be able to spend it buying consumer goods that they otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford. In other words, their consumer profile would increase.
- Suddenly, you might see a 10% increase in the number of people buying your "widgets", because people can actually afford them.
- That means you're now getting 3300 orders per month, and need to hire an extra 10 people to keep up with the demand.
- Your business still makes more money, because your net profit also increases by 10% - in line with the extra sales.

This is obviously an oversimplification, but captures the concepts... Is that clearer now?

 

More greed!

 

More of everything 'corporate'.

 

Absolutely!

 

Did I say Laffer wasn't considered an "expert"?
Did I say anything related to whether Peter Schiff is?

Straw man fallacies fail to impress.

What I did say is that - in matters related to the current and future state of the economy - there is clear evidence that Laffer's viewpoint has been 100% wrong.
Using his theories (which, as illustrated, were shown to be wrong) as the basis for economic policy on a national level is just moronic.

 

I believe our current disparity in wealth is a profit motive for the bottom line of the wealthiest. I believe socialism should bailout capitalism to the extent laissez-faire capitalism is too lazy to ensure full employment of resources in the market for labor.

 

now you've gone and done it. He's gonna say "trust fund baby" again.

 

Whereas you are cherry picking 25% of the data in which to base your argument. How fallacious.

I asked you to explain how the mortgage collapse was all Bush's fault, which you claimed was too self-evident to describe. Am I right in assuming there is no forthcoming answer to my question? What a surprise. The progressive media tells its audience "it's all Bush's fault" and they are like a deer in headlights when they are asked to explain their regurgitation.

You're free to quote me on where I said Bush had no blame for the mortgage collapse, or that Clinton was completely to blame for the wealth inequality of the 90's, if you want to try and validate your strawmen arguments and not lose more credibility.

What an ironic statement at this point in the exchange.

Progressive policies.

Denying reality much? Hackneyed quips much?

What if they don't want to? What if they don't need to? The company employs a lot of people. Nobody is forcing those people to work there.

You're using Costco to try and justify your desire to force Walmart and ALL companies to pay whatever minimum wage amount you feel is a "living wage", regardless if they can afford it or not.

Who is demonizing the individual worker? I agree companies shouldn't be subsidized by taxpayer dollars. Take your complaint to Obama and mention GE when you get a chance.

If you don't want to support a particular company, fine. I have no problem with you running a campaign to try and peel away Walmart customers to go to Costco. You're not advocating this, though. You're trying to use the power of the Federal Government to come in and tell certain companies that they make too much money, and that the excess should go to the welfare state. Big difference.

I was responding to your complaints about corporate welfare and subsidies.

"For those unaccustomed to the loopholes and shelters of the corporate tax code, GE's success at avoiding taxes is nothing short of extraordinary. The company, led by Immelt, earned $14.2 billion in profits in 2010, but it paid not a penny in taxes because the bulk of those profits, some $9 billion, were offshore. In fact, GE got a $3.2 billion tax benefit."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/general-electric-paid-federal-taxes-2010/story?id=13224558

Eliminating the current tax code and implementing a 10% flat tax would have accumulated 1.42 billion in revenues from GE alone. Instead they didn't pay a dime. That's the progressive tax system, full of loopholes, run by Government bureaucracy, that you support.

Remind me who was President in 1980? I guess you'll have to refresh your narrative on "he who rolls the first rock", eh?

Ohhh, got me there. Perhaps I didn't spike the ball as smoothly as I could have after you lobbed up the "this issue grows more severe each year" falsehood. I'll be more surgical in my dissecting of your Marxist arguments from now on.

I'm sure you do wish that. Clinton is a Democrat. Democrat means good.

I guess it was all coincidental that income inequality was narrowing and then accelerated rapidly after Clinton became President. Keep avoiding giving Clinton any of the blame for your primary complaint in this thread. I love watching the dance!

 

Please explain how including that 25% (without excluding anything) is cherry picking.

There are entire threads to deal with this specific topic, hence I don't feel the need to repeat my position on an unrelated issue on this thread. You don't get to derail the thread at whim, no matter how many appeals to spite or ad hominems you choose to use.

ok.

That's amusing from someone who has provided little more than logical fallacies thus far.

Could you be more specific? Seriously, after the whining you did about the mortgage collapse, isn't it a little hypocritical to avoid the question?

Even if all their front-line workers left today and were replaced by other front-line workers, the underlying issue (that the business is subsidizing its payroll with taxpayer dollars and pocketing the cash as "profit") would still exist.

Whether they want to keep taking taxpayer dollars or not isn't the issue. The issue is should they be allowed to. If your answer is "yes", then it's clear who's actually supporting a welfare state.

A) I used Costco as an example of a profitable fortune 500 comany that is doing this in order to illustrate that others can afford to, but choose not to.
B) I've been quite clear that the goal is to get workers off of welfare. I even provided the very specific example of McDonalds, which absorbs $1.2billion a year from taxpayers in the form of welfare by inflating it's profits by underpaying it's employees to the point that they get welfare. The minimum wage amount that I'm driving for isn't a mystery - it's the hourly wage that will allow a person working 40 hours per week to surivive in today's market.

I take it you never heard of a tu quoque fallacy... "GE did something bad, so everyone should" isn't a valid position.
As for who is demonizing the individual worker on welfare, have you actually read any of these forums or listened to the news lately? Conservatives are constantly preaching that anyone on welfare is just lazy and should try harder.

That's not only wrong, it's an outright lie.
Companies paying employees the money that they currently rely on the government to pay them would END the welfare state, not support it.

Can you point out which tax law that was passed by a progressive enabled this?
BTW, this is not at all related to companies choosing to let the government pay the bulk of their wage expenses so that they can inflate their profits and move the wealth to executives and shareholders... That practice actually drives up the number of people on welfare, whereas the government losing revenue due to creative tax filings by major businesses has nothing to do with "welfare" per se.

If the chart you provided didn't clearly show that income disparity didn't accelerate until into Reagan's administration (which makes a lot of sense considering he went out his way to drive wealth upwards in the failed hope it would "trickle down"), you'd almost have a point. After all, in 1980, the disparity was at what... 2%?
By the end of Reagan's administration, it was around 75%...

Ditto, perhaps I should have said, "this is a situation that trends more severely over time"

Interesting that you keep making partisan comments, and then periodically claiming I'm the one being blind in my support of one party over another... Just more of that hypocrisy we're coming to know so well, I guess.

If you were to draw an trendline, you'd see that that Bush41 and Clinton were the best at limiting disparity growth, though they didn't end it by killing "trickle down" fallacies.

Then perhaps you've got an interesting perspective you could contribute to the gay marriage threads?

 

You are excluding everything else but that 25%.

There were threads dedicated to how the mortgage industry collapsing was all George Bush's fault? Where?

It's not unrelated to this topic at all when you are trying to give reasons for why the economy fell apart in 07/08, but I'm not surprised you would try and find an excuse not to answer.

You seem to have a real problem producing quotes that support your arguments. Neither of those two quotes show me completely blaming Clinton for the wealth inequality of the 90's (just that it went up faster during his Presidency than it did during Reagan's - a true statement), or saying George Bush had no part at all in the mortgage industry collapse (see the phrase "many of the systemic problems..."? That implies "not all of them").

Another ironic statement, considering I just demonstrated how your arguments were, indeed, strawmen arguments.

Isn't it a little hypocritical to avoid answering a question with specifics and then asking me to answer your question with specifics?

I don't support corporate welfare policies that benefit only big business, you do by supporting the IRS and the current tax structure. All of these businesses should be paying taxes.

If you're referring to these low wage workers being dependent on welfare, I'd gladly cut our welfare system to the bone, making most of these workers ineligible. The truth is that these people could survive on their salary. They could live at home and depend on their families for support, just like people used to do back before the Government decided it needed to wipe every nose. They could live with several roommates. They could work more than one job, an idea you recoiled in horror at earlier. How many of these welfare dependent workers have iPhones in their pockets, or Air Jordans on their feet? What is their lifestyle like? How many children do they have?

Good for them! That doesn't mean every other business needs to be legislated to follow their example, which is what you're proposing. Small businesses can't afford to double their labor costs unlike these huge companies that you exclusively focus on. What about them?

Which is an entirely subjective amount that depends on a whole multitude of factors, some of which I touched upon earlier. Do you actually think these businesses are going to be able to double their labor costs without laying people off, forgoing the hiring of new workers, and raising prices? And when every company raises their prices to make up for the new labor costs, what happens to the purchasing power of the people making minimum wage? It's very telling that you continue to focus on only these large companies who make billions in profit and can afford to absorb new costs. What about small businesses, who do the majority of hiring in this country? Screw them, right? Who cares if they go out of business or stop hiring people? All your policies do is keep the field clear for larger companies to swallow up everything else.

This is an honest question and is not meant to be an insult - are you still in school? Are you employed by the Government? Have you ever had a job in the private sector?

That isn't my position. How fallacious. I am exposing hypocrisy. Obama voters support Obama, the IRS, and the current tax code, all of whom allow companies like GE to not pay a penny in taxes, yet they have the nerve to complain about "corporate welfare". It's a complete joke, but completely in-character.

I sincerely doubt that conservatives are saying that each and every person on welfare is lazy. However, when people like you gasp in horror at the idea that someone with absolutely no marketable skills should work a 2nd or 3rd job, it shows that people's perception of work is all screwed up.

No it wouldn't. Forcing every company to pay workers at least $15-20 an hour would put millions on unemployment benefits. That isn't ending the welfare state by any stretch of the imagination.

No thanks, there are thousands upon thousands of tax laws. Our current tax system is a convoluted mess. For the purposes of this conversation progressives are more likely conservatives to support the Government bureaucracy known as the IRS and the current progressive tax code.

Repetitive.

You just said that 1980 is where the wealth inequality started. Who was President in 1980? I thought you said it's the fault of the person who rolls the first rock? Is your narrative changing?

Disagreeing with your partisan comments does not mean I am making partisan comments of my own.

How was Clinton the best at limiting disparity growth? Do you really need me to keep posting this graphic?

Why? Are progressives making inconsistent Marxist arguments in those threads, too?

 

Let's review, shall we?

Art Laffer is just one example of many of a "subject matter expert with a directly opposing opinion" to the one you posted earlier.

Virtually every mainstream economist in the western world, including Ben Bernanke, failed to identify the housing bubble. If you were at all consistent, you would treat all establishment economists like you do Art Laffer.