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50% of american households hold just 1% of the country's wealth
- Thread starter Flatline
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I will throw my idea against the wall. Housing down turn + bail outs of corporations & investors equates to increased gap between wealthy and poor.
I am not saying the decisions was right or wrong. Just pointing out the possible effects of the action taken to bailout companies.
Feel free to point out fatal flaws... thanks to the you!
I am not saying the decisions was right or wrong. Just pointing out the possible effects of the action taken to bailout companies.
Feel free to point out fatal flaws... thanks to the you!
nhlducks35
Member
nhlducks35
Member
Worst talking point in recent memory.
Who exactly the "our" in "our money"?
empty vessel
Member
All money is society's money. It comes from the government and represents a debt by society to the individual possessing it. People with a lot of money = people who claim society owes them a lot.
Jason's Ultimatum
Member
I liked how Colin Powell said he received his education for free in NY; kindergarten thru college, and it was all paid for by the taxes from the rich.
I'm not sure exactly how raising taxes would create income growth and jobs, but I do see more money going towards social programs, like free college and healthcare that will help alleviate some of our problems in this country.
I'm not sure exactly how raising taxes would create income growth and jobs, but I do see more money going towards social programs, like free college and healthcare that will help alleviate some of our problems in this country.
But the depression came and evened that shit out.
MWS Natural
Member
1/10
Bay Maximus
Banned
The 1% got money from creating all those jobs.
Rich people are a part of the society. So how is there an "our" money and a "their" money?
empty vessel
Member
There isn't. It's all our money. But rich people have our money just as poor people have our money. The question is not whose money is it, but what is a fair distribution of it. Is society really as indebted to some individuals as much as they claim it is? Or has there been a "goof" in the system which has allowed a small number of individuals to make claims of entitlement that aren't really warranted?
Blergmeister
Member
You make dinner with 10 of your friends and family. A lot of potatos are made. You sit down to eat and Uncle Oscar scoops up half the potatos. Sure, he did a lot to make the meal, but why he get all dem potatos? Is the amount of potatoes he earned proportional to the amount of work he put in? It's all of your potatoes, including Uncle Oscar, but he's taking more than his share.
It's an interesting question. It wasn't really the topic I was looking to enter into a discussion on. I was more trying to get a clarification from the poster about how the rich are entitled to "our money". That just seemed like a very ambiguous term, and it made it hard for me to tell what exactly his point was.
But back to your question, if I am interpreting it correctly, seems to be is money the best indicator of the value produced by an individual to society? I guess it depends on what other viable options are out there to replace money in that role. What other options are there and what is your suggested remedy?
....
Blergmeister
Member
It's not about other viable options, it's that the weighting is wrong. I am not saying that the wealthy, in general, does not deserve success or money. I'm just saying that they are being disproportionately rewarded. To use a example in the media, Mit Romney was payed $100,000 a year for 3 years for just being a figurehead CEO. Sure, he did a lot of work to make that company what it was, but he was already handsomley compensated for that by the order of hundereds of millions of dollars. Are things working right when a multi-millionaire can do no work (for company that paid him) and earn $300,000, three hundered thousand dollars, when many people are working 40-50-60 hours weeks and are barely making ends meet?
No. You can rent a home and invest what you save in costs. Having a well rounded portfolio is not impossible for anyone over time. We've just been told the lie that everyone must own a home at all costs and damn everything else..
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Money is a good indicator of value produced for society. The question is: is a person who's net income is $30 million a year 1,000 times more valuable than someone who makes $30,000? Its impossible that they do 1,000 times as much work, so the valuation must be based on something else. Intelligence? Also almost certainly impossible. Responsibility? This one comes the closest to being a good justification: a CEO of a major corporation should have more on their heads then a factory worker. This particular issue is why I personally have a massive problem with the lack of accountability at the top of the free market at the moment: it removes the last possible explanation for why they're getting paid as much as they are.
Who is supposed to decide what the proper weighting is though? Who is smart enough to look at the economy as a whole and each person's function in it and say 'this is what that person's input is worth'?
It's a completely incalculable problem, which is why things are better left between the person writing the check and the person cashing them. Not a perfect system, but if some company wants to overpay someone it is ultimately their money to lose.
Most companies however are not in the business of losing money, so they must be getting some value in return for what you deem to be extravagant salaries.
Skiptastic
Member
Consumption makes up the bulk of our economy, yes. But we can transition spending on non-essential items in a nominal fashion towards investment and businesses/society could benefit just as much, if not more.
I'm not shocked that 50% of Americans don't have much wealth. It's hard to accumulate much wealth when most (if not all) of your income is dedicated to essentials, which have seen price increases in recent history.
Unless we're going to tax wealth, I say the best way to fix this is simply have major, MAJOR investments in infrastructure, health care, and education. Part of this should be paid for in a simplified, progressive income tax structure that leads to higher tax revenues; other parts from realized efficiencies in business over time that increase growth in GDP, as well as reduced health care costs and a more competitive labor pool that is smarter and healthier.
The wealthy are getting wealthier, the poor are getting poorer, governments are going bankrupt and the global economy is still balanced on a toothpick. Its not hard to imagine another global depression happening followed by a return to serfdom for the lower classes.
And its worth pointing that even the poverty stricken in the US still have much better living conditions than third world countries. There is a depressing thought.
And its worth pointing that even the poverty stricken in the US still have much better living conditions than third world countries. There is a depressing thought.
Jason's Ultimatum
Member
One of the managers from Sports Authority I know makes around $40k salary. Bear in mind he inherited over 100k, and he has a wife that makes a bit less than him, but he's been investing his money for years. He's made over 300k, and if nothing drastic changes in the market, he's looking to retire with an income of 13k a month. Well, that's what I saw on his account from Well's Fargos site.
I was blown away at 13k a month. I know for sure he invests in Boeing.
I was blown away at 13k a month. I know for sure he invests in Boeing.
Jason's Ultimatum
Member
Like what? Infrasture and going green? I'm down for that, but I don't think we're trying hard enough to go down that route. Also, good look on trying to wane society off non-essential items. Never gonna happen.
The problem is not so much that the wealth accumulates upwards. The effort that drives that process of upward accumulation and concentration is the same effort that provides us with much of the modern industrial comfort we enjoy. However, we run into a big damn problem when the concentration becomes too extreme, because the money stops moving around. The people who can afford to make purchases don't need anywhere near enough things to drive a national system of distribution and commerce, and the millions that can provide the necessary consumption demand won't be able to afford to.
Uncompromisable
Banned
It's strictly supply and demand for marketable skills and resources, that includes your network and who you know and who you can influence. Much like a politician, a business leader can hold a company together by negociating and compromising with different interested parties. Whatever business leaders make in wealth I'd say they most likely lose in time. Their careers are their lives and the sacrifice they make outweighs the paper they earn in my personal opinion. People who devote their lifetime to earning money pay the greater cost in this life. Taxes be damned.
Blergmeister
Member
Well, apparently that is not working as the distribution of money is disproportionately skewing toward fewer and fewer people. Things that worked in the past, such as taxation and social programs, are being axed in the name of helping hard working Americans, but the Americans this would "hurt" are actually better off now than they ever had been while the rest of us are getting smaller and smaller portions of the pie.
Edit:
Are you arguing that the rich CEO is worse off than the factory worker whose job is shipped overseas? If the CEO is suffering so much why doesn't he bail out sooner? That job tends to have pretty plush retirement packages.
If both the CEO and the Worker are miserable than that is even more incentive to change the system. No one is happy.
The Power Of Snap
Member
We have the same problem in canada.
Skiptastic
Member
:lol I would have hoped that society would have been learning to wean itself off that shit with the recession.
Yes, I'm talking about massive infrastructure improvements, but also massive health care investments. One to reduce our Net Export imbalance, one to restrain the growth of our consumption of health care. With the Boomers, HC expenditures probably aren't going to decrease unless we have a major technological glut that expands our supply, but we can at least try to get them lowered down to near inflation growth.
You're absolutely right, though. We haven't tried hard enough to go down that route.
Uncompromisable
Banned
No one is happy, I believe that.
I am not arguing that the CEO is necessarily worse off, but I certainly don't envy upper management. it's like any field, for every golden parachute given away to a CEO, there were dozens of people like him who may have worked just as hard but never left middle-management. I am speaking at the personal individual level to say that many people have the opportunity to be wealthier, many of us just find that the cost is too high. We have individual beliefs, we don't want to sell out and prostitute our values and integrities for money. But some do, and I am indifferent to them.
As for manufacturing jobs being sent overseas, it's inevitable and in some ways even desirable. Yes I do believe the society should aim to retrain and give support to people who's jobs left the country.
Anyway yeah, rich people should pay more taxes, yadda yadda...
Metroid Hunter
Banned
Yup.
Inflammable Slinky
Member
Real talk:
The very existence of the wealthy class is predicated on the continuous and inexorable drain of income from the working class.
Investor class does not contribute any labor of value. They exist as a parasite on the working class, taking in more and more of the wealth generated from the labor process.
All the wealth stratification, inequality, and suffering in the current world is the intended result of the capitalist mode of production. And it won't get better any time soon.
The fundamental crisis of capitalism will continue to manifest in the future, but the total lack of class consciousness in America will prevent any reform from taking place. If there is hope, it will come from the Global South.
/baby'sfirstmarxism
The very existence of the wealthy class is predicated on the continuous and inexorable drain of income from the working class.
Investor class does not contribute any labor of value. They exist as a parasite on the working class, taking in more and more of the wealth generated from the labor process.
All the wealth stratification, inequality, and suffering in the current world is the intended result of the capitalist mode of production. And it won't get better any time soon.
The fundamental crisis of capitalism will continue to manifest in the future, but the total lack of class consciousness in America will prevent any reform from taking place. If there is hope, it will come from the Global South.
/baby'sfirstmarxism
Sanky Panky
Banned
The old boomers that didn't refinance under artificially high prices, are now back to their inflation-adjusted equity levels. They didn't see their house as a credit card, and now enjoy the security that housing brings. Yes the asset is less liquid than others, but a property that is fairly priced will move, despite the current contraction in credit. Moreover, the value of a property will never fall below it's land value and can be improved upon to create value.
Owning property is still one of the tickets to wealth. Just because the artificially inflated stock market hasn't crashed into oblivion (it will), doesn't mean one is superior to the other.
Individual efforts to save and invest are rewarded, but we have had central governments entirely pre-occupied with enabling financial asset bubbles, and credit-driven demand, while forgetting to keep wages on pace with production.
Both parties are equally bad, and Obama is a hack when it comes to a bottom-up approach to the economy.
Depressingly true. At this point you have to ensure your children are super competetive at every level of their schooling, just so that they can have a decent life later.
Shit is going to be scary in 20 years.
Flatline
Banned
I don't know if this is the most stupid attempt at thread derailment I've seen lately or just a bitter reactionary response. Completely pointless either way.
These two sentences are contradictory. And they're right next to each other! If CEOs work just as hard as middle management, then people aren't failing to become rich because they aren't willing to pay the personal cost, they're failing to become rich because paying the personal cost has no actual correlation with success unless you're also named after a hotel magnate...as plenty of people who work two minimum-wage jobs and have just as little time to spend with their families and personal lives as CEOs, but with about 1/100,000 of the compensation, could easily tell you if they weren't so busy.
ReBurn
Gold Member
About as pointless as the picture it was posted in response to. Talk about tired memes.
So do the other 50% of American households hold 99% or the country's wealth? With all of these percentages being thrown around it's hard to know who has too much.
You fucking dipshit.
Tax, penalty, fine, fee, they all mean the same damn thing.
You are comparing the use of synonyms to spouting a falsehood as your economic platform.
I am sick of you shitty republicans and your red herrings, your witch hunts, your racism, your false equivalences and indignation.
Fuck you, and your "NO U" tactics.
Considering both of my parents (mother and stepfather) worked their asses off to educate themselves in STEM majors, and my mother eventually getting her MBA which gave my family a nice cushion of high-end income until my mother later became a teacher, and then disabled, and then both of them lost their jobs, I'd say that I don't mind this. My family worked to get to the stratosphere of American income. My parents were previously wealthy because they went for it themselves, good for them. Screw anyone who would look down on that.
Before you bring up "wealthy born into wealthy/wealthy getting wealthier" lol no. My mother was born as a child of 5 in a dirt poor rural village in the mountains of Colombia, with no money, working since kindergarten at a farm, with everyone working so she could get the money to go to Catholic grade school and eventually pave the road for her to become a chemical engineer. She's a rags to riches story if I ever saw one. It usually takes 8 generations to break a poverty cycle in a family. My mother broke it in one, and because of that, I get to go to school to be an engineer as well.
Before you bring up "wealthy born into wealthy/wealthy getting wealthier" lol no. My mother was born as a child of 5 in a dirt poor rural village in the mountains of Colombia, with no money, working since kindergarten at a farm, with everyone working so she could get the money to go to Catholic grade school and eventually pave the road for her to become a chemical engineer. She's a rags to riches story if I ever saw one. It usually takes 8 generations to break a poverty cycle in a family. My mother broke it in one, and because of that, I get to go to school to be an engineer as well.
TheChewyWaffles
Member
What the hell are you talking about? They voted in a president who is decidedly anti-business, or certainly moreso than the alternative candidate. Or are you an illuminati conspiracy theorist that thinks no matter what happens the elections are always predetermined?
Flatline
Banned
That picture is extremely relevant to the thread the other isn't... at all.
Isn't it obvious that the rest owns the 99%? What's much more interesting is that the top 10% owns 74.5% of the country's wealth.
TheChewyWaffles
Member
Wow, you're a classy fella. Was this invective really necessary? I've been banned for far, far less around here.
GaimeGuy
Intellectual Lightweight
(Today, 04:49 PM)
Interesting way of looking at it. I look at money as a value of things, whether it be ideas, assets, or labor. People who are rich either have lots of assets, have good ideas, or provide a labor that has a high value. Or inherited it.
Huh?
Your post was intellectually dishonest and unrelated to the topic at hand.
I'm not going to mince words if you're going to post bullshit.
ThatCrazyGuy
Member
My parents worked hard as well. One from a 3rd world country. One from the midwest.
They are for proper wealth distribution and fixing the tax code. My dad used to vote republican. He said he is getting sick of them.
They look down upon people who game the system. They want the system fixed. Everybody wants the system fixed.
well it's a complex situation so any analogy is going to be somewhat flawed. But here is how the system more accurately works. 10 of you are sitting around eating grass and berries. Uncle Oscar says "hey I have an idea that will feed us 5 times as well as we are. I need your labor to help me but I get half of our produce since its my idea. You agree and when he has you plant potatoes he then gets half. His idea was more valuable than your labor so he is compensated more for it. Like I said though this is a broad analogy of how wealth differences develop. Not every situation is like this.
Well mine want it fixed too, but probably in a way different from others.
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