Paying a "fair share"

You think Reagan and the conservatives who set up "trickle down" as the policy were evil? Could be.

The workforce has always changed. But it didn't start dramatically changing just in 1981 when inequality skyrocketed. Nor did 90% of Americans stop gaining skills, obtaining education, or making bad decision.

That is just your same old 1% apologist excuse making.



No, something else happened that year.

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It is not true that the richest 1% get more and more and more of the share of the nation's income and wealth under any system.



That wasn't the case in the US from WWII until 1981. What happened that year again?

 

Relocation is ALWAYS an option! People may not accept this option but it is ALWAYS an option. Options are solutions to a problem and the more options one has the easier it is to obtain more. When a person refuses the option of relocation then they must accept what is available to them where they choose to reside.

Yellow Pages says there are two obscure aerospace companies;http://www.yellowpages.com/redding-ca/aerospace-companies

Each person has a potential and it is up to each person to take steps to achieve their full potential. If they don't do all they can do to achieve their full potential then they must accept something less. No matter one's skills or education, etc. they must place themselves where the jobs are located and then compete with others for those limited jobs...

 

What happened starting in 1981. During Reagan's two terms, wages went up inflation went down and over 18 million jobs were created.

 

Since there is no evil conspiracy how much to pay all employees in the USA, why do you suppose the wages are what they are today?

I'm all for universal health care, better and free education K-16, effective public transportation, affordable housing, etc. but all of it must be funded by taxpayers! Not by your 1% but by all taxpayers.

You think buying imports creates huge growth to our economy?

60% of GDP is personal consumption...

 

Yes the rich got richer. But did they hoard the money? If they did, how did 18 million jobs get created?

 

Why should we reduce ourselves to slave wages to compete with third world countries for the scraps handed out by corporations recording record level profits? That's no recipe for success.

 

Why not just make the minimum wage 100k?

 

That is untrue. It is an undeniable fact that a significant percentage of low wage workers will never be able to compete for high level jobs no matter what personal actions they take.

 

1) Businesses cannot afford it.
2) It isn't necessary
3) it would be counter productive.

 

Because that would be stupid.

 

Because in the 1980s, the middle class was still getting a healthy share of the nation's income and wealth and had the money to spend.

Plus Reagan increased spending massively and governments created hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Federal Spending increase, 1981-1986: +46.0%.
Total government employment, 1981-1986: +879,000

Compare with Obama in office:

Obama
Federal Spending increase, 2009-2014: -0.53%
Total government employment, 2009-2014: -540,000

 

So, what is the magic number that has never been reached?

 

It was just a sophomoric attempt with an appeal to the extreme logical fallacy. Like: if an apple a day is good for you, why not eat 1000 apples a day?

 

Making bad trade agreements don't help either. We needed to do what Ross Perot suggested. He was fairly right when he said how we would come out of this recession, although he forgot to add in the cost of transporting goods here.

[video=youtube;xQ7kn2-GEmM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ7kn2-GEmM[/video]

 

If the employer were giving them money, they wouldn't have to perform a service.

Purposely excluding one of your neighbors while inviting everyone else is not peaceful behavior.

I didn't say anything about anyone's feelings being hurt. Walmart has demonstrated quite clearly how one employer paying low wages can undercut competition driving them out of business and reducing wages and opportunities for an entire community. Your attempt to dismiss this as "peaceful behavior" is laughable .

If we were in a situation of full employment, that would be fine. But we haven't had that for decades. When there are more workers than jobs, employees don't have the luxury of just leaving an exploitative employer.

 

In most part I agree with you. Driving up wages will only keep the gap between us wide and keep business from moving back. But when we make trade rules that favor everyone but us, we hurt ourselves. We thought when we set up NAFTA and Free Trade we would have billions of people to sell to. But instead we made it easier for these companies to move out, thus we have nothing left to sell the average Mexican, Indian and Chinese. They now make it themselves. What we have left is big ticket items we can sell to these foreign companies, or their government. But we missed being able to sell to billions of average consumers. It was bad trade agreements that hurt us.

 

Most of Federal spending was because of an arms race with the Soviet Union and Reagan's desire to bankrupt the Soviets out of existence. Plane fact is, even though the gap widened between rich and poor, the average American's wages went up under Reagan, not down.

 

That was the excuse. But the end result was the same. Hundreds of billions of federal $$ pumped into the economy and hundreds of thousands of new government jobs.

It was positively Keyensian. Maybe we should have done that under Obama for the past 5 years. Oh wait, we couldn't. We had that massive debt run up by Reagan, Bush and Bush.

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Inequality started skyrocketing many years before Nafta was passed, much less had an effect.



No, something else happened that year.

 

I'm asking a legitimate question. Since the minimum wage is never enough and we have always had poor working families, I want to know what the right number is.

 

Now you're resorting to a straw man argument. Where have I ever said the MW is never enough?

 

Once again, look at the economy under Carter and Reagan. It did much better under Reagan.

http://www.ifindkarma.com/attic/LEAD/compare

 

Your right and I said so before. The gap got bigger under Reagan's tax cuts. But the average American didn't get poorer. His wages went up too, although not as fast. Now if wages had gone down and jobs lost, I could see your point. But the economy grew, inflation went down Eighteen million jobs were created. It wasn't Reagan that made thing as bad as they are today. It's bad trade deals and pushing banks to loan money for homes to people who couldn't afford them that made this economy what it is today.

 

Lets say before Reagan, my boss made one million dollars and I made $40,000.00 Then when Reagan left, my boss made two million a year and I made $50,000.00. The trade gap widened, but I still gained $10.000 a year. Plus with inflation going down, it no longer cost me 21% to buy a washer and dryer. I can now get it for 12%. Did I lose even though the gap got wider?

 

I know you're trying to defend Reagan's economic policies, but the truth is that almost none of the economic growth since the Reagan "trickle down" revolution has "trickled down".

Family median income 2012 dollars
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/families/2012/F06AR_2012.xls

Year - income
2012 62,241
1979 57,734
1953 31,929

In the 26 years from 1953 to 1979, real median family income (in inflation adjusted terms) grew by 81%.

In the 33 years from 1979 to 2012, real median family income (in inflation adjusted terms) grew by 8%.


http://bea.gov/national/nipaweb/SelectTable.asp?Selected=N

In the 26 years from 1953 to 1979, real GDP (in inflation adjusted terms) grew by 126.4%

In the 33 years from 1979 to 2012, real GDP (in inflation adjusted terms) grew by 137.9%

http://bea.gov/national/xls/gdplev.xls

The trillions of growth in income and wealth have not been shared with the middle classes since the Reagan "trickle down" revolution.

 

The economy did great till nafta and free trade went into effect and then tanked over the housing fiasco. Both those things brought the econmy down, it wasn't reagan no matter how much you want to blame him.