Income inequality in America...I want your thoughts on this.

[video=youtube;QPKKQnijnsM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPKKQnijnsM#at=373[/video]

Thoughts? I want to hear input on this and not simply "LIBERALS!!!!" "CONSERVATIVES!!!!" "DEMOCRATS!!!!" "REPUBLICANS!!!!" "OBAMA!!!!!!" etc.

Civil discussion?

 

It has become clear that a small pack of thieves and murderers have rigged the system to capture a ridiculous percentage of total wealth while contributing absolutlely nothing of value. Our country is on the fast track to becoming becoming a debt slave colony run by said scum. Meanwhile they have morons who make a couple hundred grand a year and being fleeced in taxes and paying ten times what they should in energy costs and health care blaming their plight on the poorest among us while worshipping the usurpers. We can all thank the GOP and Fox news for cheering them on.

 

We need to rebuild America. So much of America's success in the past have been large projects that have employed millions of American's, whether it be railroads, bridges, damns, highways, space races, etc. Pump a trillion+ dollars in to real infrastructure projects and America's middle class would be prospering again.

 

It is an esentially meaningless statistic and largely a function of the fact that we have a tax code that clobbers new money which makes wealth formation by those who aren't already pretty well healed ever more difficult.

 

Probably the worst explanation I've ever heard of why we have such a large disparity of wealth, lol.

 

For starters, I would point out that the title of this thread is income inequality, and the video is about wealth inequality. This may seem petty, but in fact the difference between the two terms is enormous. Being that you post on a political forum, would lead me to believe that you probably tend to pay more attention than your average American on such issues. This video puts an awful lot of credance upon what the 5000 surveyed Americans THINK is the actual wealth distribution, versus what are the actual numbers. If someone like yourself that pays attention to the issue much more than your average American, and in fact are so moved by the issue that your created a thread about it, is confused by the differing meaning of the two terms, what chance did the 5000 random phone survey participants have in crafting an accurate picture of what a bar graph looks like of wealth inequality?

 

Exactly its a big difference to income, but its income these progressives want so..... However anyone amassing wealth knows the worst way possible to do is via income, yes its needed to get started, but that's why they invest in the puppeteers - major corporations. I dont have a problem with this other than in one exception, the banks. I wouldnt mind knowing how much these thieves have taken, they dont even offer a real product. Scuffle your money here and there, we pay for their failures, they pay off the politicians and take the profits, total scam.

 

So, how much of your money are you going to redistribute to me?

 

or maybe I just made a (*)(*)(*)(*)ing mistake in my word usage and you can actually address the damn video as opposed to (*)(*)(*)(*)ing title.

 

lol, you call for a civil discussion and then go around cussing at people who contribute.

Liberals are by far, second to none, the most retarded creatures on Earth.

 

Right wingers are the most vile excuses of a human being this side of the Milky Way..

 

Too bad Obama squandered so much on his stimulus, which of course was supposed to be about infrastructure. We simply cannot afford another scam so expensive, hoping it'll really be what he and other (*)(*)(*)(*)ing liars claim it to be.

 

No it wasn't. It was laid out from the very beginning how much money was going to be spent and where it was going to be spent. We need before the stimulus was even signed how much was going to be spent on direct infrastructure jobs. Surprisingly the Republican's hate jobs so they made majority of the stimulus a bailout for states and tax credits for individuals. You can track where every single dollar and every single job was created here...

http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/default.aspx

Your lies are getting amusing.

 

LOL....I thought that you called for civil discussion? You are missing the point entirely. You made a mistake because it is very easy to confuse the two. Why would somebody on the phone be any less likely to also make the same mistake? Thats the point....this is a complex topic, and not one that lends itself very well to a quick phone survey. In pointing out the mistake you made, then correlating it to a likely mistake that many of the phone respondents would make, I am in fact DIRECTLY addressing the "damn video" as you put it. Considering that most lower and middle class people tend to live largely from paycheck to paycheck, while only adding to their net worth through appreciation in their house, coupled with the fact that most houses have decreased in value significantly in the last 5 or so years, I am not one bit surprised that wealth accumulation is going to largely be the domain of the upper 10%. You act as if this is shocking.

 

My thought is that wealth and income distribution is none of government's cotton-pickin' business.

 

You act as if this has only been occurring over the last 5-10 years.

 

Of course this hasnt only been happening over the last 10 years, my point was that it has been exacerbated over the last 10 years with the decrease in value of most peoples main source of net worth, which is their house. Wealth accumulates over time, and the longer that someone has a good income, the more wealth they amass. It seems that the "Occupy Wall Street" types have stumbled upon this obvious fact, and are NOW trying to pretend this is indicative of economic armegeddon.

 

Are you arguing that extreme wealth inequality is NOT a negative phenomenon?

 

The business cycle, which has been observed for two and a half millennia, states that wealth alternately accumulates and dissipates.

In the US government interference with the economy (regulations, taxation, litigation) inhibits the turnover due to new competitors.

 

In the US, the right allows the wealthy to purchase legislation that protects their business interests and inhibits your business cycle from occurring.

 

Yup! This is the truth! The sad part is, DUMMMASSSESS actually believe the FAIRY TALES that if we give them even more money, jobs will start magically popping up everywhere!

 

I am arguing that wealth inequality is REALITY, and I myself prefer to live in reality. I dont have time to worry about how much money the richest of the rich have amassed. If the next Bill Gates pops up tomorrow and earns a billion dollars...that billion dollars doesnt cost me one red cent, and is quite frankly none of my business. People spend far too much time worrying about what others have, and far too little time figuring out how they can improve their own situation.Equality of outcomes is NOT the domain of the government.

 

He didn't contribute, he simply addressed the title and not the video. I didn't offer my opinion or views and simply wanted to know how/why that's happening, how/why it's okay if it is, and if there are any details missing from the video due to a probable bias.

Instead I get a (*)(*)(*)(*)load of assumptions based on using one word instead of the title of the video.

 

Except extreme income/wealth inequality is a symptom of a broken system:

"First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity.

Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests—undermine the efficiency of the economy.

Third, and perhaps most important, a modern economy requires “collective action”—it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology.

The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes.

But one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way. The most obvious example involves tax policy. Lowering tax rates on capital gains, which is how the rich receive a large portion of their income, has given the wealthiest Americans close to a free ride.

Much of today’s inequality is due to manipulation of the financial system, enabled by changes in the rules that have been bought and paid for by the financial industry itself—one of its best investments ever.

Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth."

--Joseph Stiglitz.

http://csteconomics.blogspot.com/2011/04/dangers-of-income-inequality.html

 

So, is it a problem that a few people have enormous wealth?
Or is the problem that so many have so very little?

Once you've identified the problem, what is the solution?

Blame the poor for being poor? Claim that they just need to go out and get a job, when they likely have one or perhaps two or three?

Blame the rich for being rich and not sharing?

It seems to me that there is a difference between solving a problem and blaming the problem on someone.

How about this as a start to solving this complex issue:

Tax capital gains the same as ordinary earned income.
Encourage unions, so that the workers have at least some power.
Get rid of the welfare state. Make the state the employer of last resort. Encourage, rather than discourage, people who have low job skills to go out and enter the work force so that they can start to work their way up the ladder.
As for the ladder: How about a career ladder making it possible to gain job skills while on the job?
Take the burden of providing health care off of the shoulders of the employers so as to encourage full time, rather than part time, employment, to facilitate starting of independent businesses, and make it less expensive to hire workers.
Take a tip from Henry Ford: If the worker can't afford what he's making, then business has no market.

There. Go ahead and label those ideas as either hopelessly "liberal" or "conservative" if you must. Is there a better solution?