Income Inequality in America

No, there is not. Union membership tanked in the 90s while wages peaked.

You know what there is a correlation between? Union membership and PPP. Too bad it is a negative one. The only positive one you can find with unions is public union membership and debt. The most unionized cities are the deepest in debt and/or bankrupt.

(Flint and Detroit have the strongest public unions and we know there stories)

When you get the chance post the union membership numbers and the real wage numbers. I bet you see more decline in growth after the war on poverty started. But some times of growth (Reagan and Gingrich eras), growth in income that is. Union membership declined those years.

 

How many of the 1% that hold all the wealth make their fortune by being paid wages?

That rights, bugger all. Yet all the socialists want to even the wealth distribution by attacking peoples wages, which decrease incentive and innovation. Instead we should raise tax rates on 'rich companies', that creates greater competition. Small business is the engine room for real job creation which supplies more ladders of opportunity into the workforce, into the middle class and as a business owner.

 

Also if you can get back to my "do they make that year after year" question when you can.

 

A janitor is not supposed to be a permanent job. If you intend to make a career out of being a janitor, you should probably give up on life. Unless you just really enjoy cleaning stuff. In which case, you should be pretty happy and desire little beyond your current situation.

Temporary jobs are meant to be used as stepping stones up the ladder to success. After you leave one stone, the person behind you is free to step up on it. In fact, you could actually be argued to be hindering economic growth by clinging to a low-level job indefinitely rather than using it as a springboard onto bigger and better things.

I've got news for you. Failure is inevitable. It's part of the road to success. People like you seem to think it's just smooth sailing. Which is why you never take calculated risks at all. Successful people readily embrace failure time and time again. Because each failure is another lesson learned and another step forward toward success.

Perseverance is the act of embracing failure. Not being deterred by it.

Which is all the more reason to get rid of that public dole. With nothing to sit comfortably on, they'll have no choice but to get back up and try again. And again and again until they get to where they want to be.

Notice how my perspective promotes action, growth, and momentum while yours promotes inaction, stagnation, and surrender? This is exactly why the people with your perspective end up on the government dole in the first place. Because they expect to land there.

Why would they be relegated to a life of mediocrity? Firefighters and policemen can still work their way up to the top of their profession. And in the case of teachers, they can actually go teach at a private institution if they don't feel like they are being paid well enough in a public one.

Look, I'm not Tony Robbins. I'm not going to sit here and try to convince you to go live your own dream if you'd rather play it safe and be a part of somebody else's. That just means you'll end up working for me someday instead of the other way around. I don't really care what you do. My only concern is that when too many people think like you, they vote for politicians that take away my freedom to pursue my dream and force mediocrity upon me against my will. And upon everyone else out there like me that would rather take risks than cling to comfort. And not only is that messed up from a moral perspective, but it's also the beginning of the end for a prosperous society from a practical perspective. Because society needs people like me in order to function. If they all think like you, then we all eventually end up producing nothing and expecting the government to provide everything for us. At which point freedom disappears and we all become dependent.

 

"In 1977, Joseph Stiglitz showed that under certain conditions, spending by the government on public goods will increase aggregate land rents by an equal amount. This result was dubbed by economists the Henry George Theorem, as it characterizes a situation where Henry George's “single tax” is not only efficient, it is also the only tax necessary to finance public expenditures.[1] Henry George had famously advocated for the replacement of all other taxes with a "single tax" on land value."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George_Theorem

Landowners are enriches at others expense. Deal with it. Arguing against the LVT won't change that. Even if you proved that LVT doesn't work, which you won't and will never, this doesn't change what's happening.

Government spending enriches landowner's at others' expense.

DEAL WITH IT.

 

Risk has no inherent value. That was the point. Too bad you missed it.

Rent seeking is not necessarily "getting freebies from the government" although most rent seeking involves that. You really don't know what you're talking about. Anyways, landowners do get freebies from the government:

"In 1977, Joseph Stiglitz showed that under certain conditions, spending by the government on public goods will increase aggregate land rents by an equal amount. This result was dubbed by economists the Henry George Theorem, as it characterizes a situation where Henry George's “single tax” is not only efficient, it is also the only tax necessary to finance public expenditures.[1] Henry George had famously advocated for the replacement of all other taxes with a "single tax" on land value."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George_Theorem

The government enforces their claim to the land in return and they get all the land rent government spending created which is not recovered through the property tax.

I never insult until the other side gets insulting. I'm aware that a lot of people just try to make the best within this system. That doesn't change my opinion that the economic entity of the landowner is a cheat and a thief. Anyways, it would help you look at it rationally rather than knee jerk opposing it.

Coming to think of it, it wouldn't help you. You specifically told me that part of your retirement money comes from landowning. No wonder you oppose such reform so much.

 

You are wrong. You are always wrong.

Classical liberals recognized the injustice inherent in private landownership and even sought to correct it with a land value tax placed in the Articles of Confederation:

"A right of property in movable things is admitted before the establishment of government. A separate property in lands not till after that establishment.... He who plants a field keeps possession of it till he has gathered the produce, after which one has as good a right as another to occupy it. Government must be established and laws provided, before lands can be separately appropriated and their owner protected in his possession. Till then the property is in the body of the nation." - Thomas Jefferson

"Men did not make the earth.... It is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property.... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds." - Thomas Paine, "Agrarian Justice," paragraphs 11 to 15

"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which, when land was in common, cost the labourer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them. He must then pay for the licence to gather them; and must give up to the landlord a portion of what his labour either collects or produces. This portion, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent of land, and in the price of the greater part of commodities makes a third component part. " - Adam Smith

"Landlords grow richer in their sleep, without working, risking, or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not to the individual who might hold title." - John Stuart Mill

"VIII.

All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several States in proportion to the value of all land within each State, granted or surveyed for any person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to such mode as the United States in Congress assembled, shall from time to time direct and appoint.

The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several States within the time agreed upon by the United States in Congress assembled." - Articles of Confederation

 

Just like robbing banks. SO?

Risk doesn't make on deserving. Risk doesn't make something a contribution to the economy. Risk is only admirable if the supposed outcome is admirable.

Like the risks the abolitionists took.

There would be no economic progress without production.

You hate that word, don't you. 'Production'

 

I've never understood why "socialists" in America don't band together, buy land, and show the rest of the country how it should be done.

It is perfectly legal to run a cooperative. Certainly, with enough people involved, plenty of money could be raised to get the movement going.

Why don't people band together and create this agricultural/manufacturing based utopia, where everyone earns an equal and ample living wage?

I mean, if you're trying to sell an idea on the large scale, how about demonstrating it on the small scale first, just to be safe?

Most of the problems and solutions that are continually talked about by socialists could be solved within the confines of the current economic and legal systems. If, that is, the proffered solutions are legitimate.

 

He claimed people get wealthy by producing. Nobody produced land. Nobody produced natural resources. Yet that people get wealthy merely by owning those.

I just refuted him. Try some logic some time.

 

What does "deserving" have to do with anything?

And whom are the arbiters of this "deserving"?

 

Demand people who do little to nothing in this country start making a contribution worth compensation?


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So, you'd be fighting against the abolitionists to PROTECT PRIVATE PROPERTY, since private property is always justified...?

 

Let's start with with the rent seekers.

 

I've already posted the numbers from 2 top govt agencies. You saw them. Find another thread, You're making a fool out of yourself here.

 

You notice they will dodge this? Because that would be a lot of work. Better to force it on everyone and have take the products they have made.

 

You didn't post numbers, you posted links to socialist mother jones blog, and a progressive socialist website. If you think any of these numbers are wrong, let me know specifically and we can check it out. Otherwise your failure to dodge the data makes you look like you are foolishly clinging to an idea even if you know it is wrong because it speaks to the political narrative you believe in.

 

Nope. I was just responding to the dude's ludicrous claim that from Reagan we got "massive growth" (when the Reagan/Bush 28-31% tax years produced some of the worst GDP and job Growth ever.

Actually, though to go to your question, yeah sure, I would say raising the individual tax on the rich would of course create economic growth by transferring do nothing money into consumer spending in the stores (AKA the economy). Also see Post # 85.

 

I have dodged nothing. You got govt agency stats from me, and now YOU ARE LYING.You are dishonest. I refuse to talk to you. Pleas don't ever talk to me again. I am am honest poster. You are unqualified to be talking to me.
Your last sentence is an exact descriptoipn of what YOU are doing. If you reply to me again I will report you to ht eforum for harassment. GET LOST CREEP!

Look at the graph V shape from 1980 to 2000.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/unit...tes/gdp-growth

Notice the downward slope of the 1980s compared to the upward slope of the 1990s. Massive growth during the Reagan years ? Where did you get that poppycock ? Massive growth of illegal aliens in America maybe.

Try the US Dept of Labor Statistics and the US Dept of Economic Analysis & Tax Policy Center

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/...schart0628.jpg

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/...atesgrowth.jpg

As the government charts clearly show, when tax tares were high, so was GDP growth and job growth. When they were at the pathetic 28-31% of the Reagan-Bush(41) years, growth was minimal. (1.2% job growth and 2.6% GDP growth).

Also, these rates are of the individual taxes, not corporate. So what does it matter if the super rich non-business sector's taxes go up. They don't have a business to reinvest in (or really anything to invest in) When you're taking in hundreds of millions of dollars, you're already making your big money. No need to invest. So I've answered your next questions before you ask them.

 

Well, let's start low: Is a slave owner deserving of what his property produces?

Whatever the market decides they deserve in return for their contribution. Free markets that is. Which you probably oppose.

Your chin just dropped all the way to the floor, didn't it?

 

Who's "they"? I haven't seen anybody advocate socialism in this thread.

 

Read this, if you're interested how the industrial revolution was delayed by IP laws:

http://www.micheleboldrin.com/research/aim/anew01.pdf

Currently or does the past also count? IP laws are in place so that makes i harder to find one today. That doesn't mean we wouldn't have all these inventions without IP laws. That would be question begging.

Sure, as long as I manage to have a head start in the market. And I don't think nearly as much money will be necessary if you can freely use all the information and ideas there are and use them to improve your own products.

That's such hypocrisy anyways. The IP owner got to freely use all sorts of information and ideas discovered and invented all throughout human history but then turns around that his information and ideas are some holy thing nobody else should touch.

Well, IP laws are in place, so most inventions will have been monopolized by it.

Anyways:

Penicilin, Polio vaccine, Electric guitar

 

I don't think I've ever seen you post anything but this kind of stupid and dishonest "blame-the-victim" filth.

 

So the government writes the books or the music which is copy righted? Or invents the things or processes which are patented? I don't think even you are weird enough to believe that goober.

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Profits made over seas should be allowed back into the country after businesses expand their operations over seas.

BTW, there were W-2s back then or an equivalent document to show earnings.

 

I missed that. What do you mean?