Income gap widens between rich & poor

[MaklodaSux]

Quote from new$:

Didn't we export the middle class standard of living when we exported the design, engineering and production of manufacturing ?

Yes, and that's what people like Ross Perot were fighting NAFTA for. It's going over to India and China in the form of H1Bs and L1 employees. There are all kinds of programs trying to take down our international barriers. These people on this board won't understand that sort of argument because most don't work in the field and plain old don't care mainly because they're out of touch. How many engineer and scientist lobbyists do you see? Small percentage. Hell how many engineers are in any form of government? (I have no idea but it's probably very very small)

 

[DrEvil]

Quote from TGregg:

Incorrect. Well, maybe unintended to some. But you know the power brokers in the DNC know which side of their bread is buttered. A happy, employed, productive citizenry does not need big government handouts. People barely scrapping by with a couple family members who are unemployed make great voters for the Great Society. People on the welfare roles make excellent class warfare victims, and since they have nothing to do all day can vote more. Several times, even.

WTF would liberals want to get people jobs? Then they'd have things like self respect and a general distrust of government. Much better from their POV to keep people dependent on government.

+1

 

[HomoSalmon]

Quote from bwolinsky:

In the end everyone gets richer. If you want proof, you can look at the percentage of individuals or families making $70,000 or more or whatever amount and see that proportion from the 50's to now has grown by leaps and bounds.

It's not a race to the bottom, but a race to the top, and all of the empirical evidence out there supports that fact. Any evidence to the contrary is from people without any data to back up what they're saying.

Two notes:
1) you assumed costant purchase value of money. It is disproved by barely existence of CPI.

2) You assumed no innovation (or at least, that all innovations value is assigned to innovators, disproved by a simple study on income of highly skilled technical people).

You're assuming the value of work of unskilled people is costant. Another valid assumption could be the contrary, on the premises that unskilled people relief more skilled people of work they should have done themself, so the value of their work raise as value of skilled work raise (althrough not at same level, to mantain incentive to invest on skill-building and innovation).

Think on domestic help: all work done by low-pay home helper is a relief for someone else with a higher value work.
Now when the latter's income raise, his/her break-even value for home work raise, and thus in the long run the value of home helper should raise, too. Innovation and productivity growth should benefit all the country, not only innovators.

Main problem today is that income growth of top 10% it is not anymore related to innovations or productivity growth, but only on bargaining power. Thus it is a zero-sum game, someone else have to pay for that growth, becoming poorer (absolutely poorer, not only relatively).

Income is becoming less and less a proxy for productivity.
IMO, of course.

 

[HomoSalmon]

Quote from Scataphagos:

It's a BIG problem. One aspect... productivity.

Remember how GreenScam was always harping on how "increased productivity" was contributing to our prosperity? Well, that's backfired. Where we used to have 10 people working in a plant or a mill, we now have 1 person and a big machine. What's to be done with the 9 displaced workers?

The real problem it is that person do not have ten times real income than before,
thus spending that income, say travelling or in personal services, create 9 more jobs and all stay better.

Think on what people say they would do if they become richer. Often, travelling for tourism, going to spa, have a higher lifestyle, ad so on. All these wishes require work, and so require more jobs.

If you see it at sistemic level, doing the same work with less people enriches the system, and create more (different) jobs, IF productivity growth is shared and not buried in a vault.

 

[Specterx]

Quote from college_trad3r:

false. the government can create wealth by progressive taxing.

lol

 

[college_trad3r]

Quote from bevo96:

Quote from Sandybestdog:

I don’t think Socialism is a viable option, in fact I voted for Ron Paul. Really if you just get rid of the fractional reserve banking, the gap will narrow significantly. But I do love it when people talk about Socialism as if it’s just taking the “rich’s” money and giving it to everybody else. Like it doesn’t matter what you do, the government is just gonna send you a check that they took from some rich guy. That’s not it at all. Does anybody actually think that a system would be set up whereby everybody just shares everything no matter what they do?

Pretend for a minute that you had a “socialized” company. Everybody got paid the same. Or maybe the workers all got paid the same, and the managers a little more but all the same. Republicans act like under this system everybody is just getting a free check from someone else’s pocket. They all do unequal work, but all get the same pay. In fact, you don’t even have to show up to work to get paid. In reality that’s not how it would work at all. It’s more like the company(government) decides how much each job pays and then the person does the job and then gets paid. Do you actually think this pretend “socialized” company would still send a check to all those people who didn’t show up to work and are liabilities to the company? All these stupid Republican catch phrases like “ the problem with Socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other peoples money” are just fancy slogans to win elections and keep the people dumbed down. "

So what you are suggesting is we institute title based compensation? If you are a janitor you make X dollars a year. It does not matter if you are the greatest janitor in the world or you sit on your mop bucket all day long? As long as you show up, you get paid.

What will ever drive innovation? Everyone will revert to the BARE MINIMUM EFFORT just to keep their job once they realize that effort and performance are rewarded equally with laziness as everyone knows its much easier to just be lazy.

You don't actually make more money if you're a good janitor in a mc donalds or wallmart. You just get put on the wall as employee-of-the-month.

Looks like effort isn't rewarded at all in a republican society. Also don't discount the fact that bankers that earn 400 million a year get bailed out, when the average human cannot even fathom spending more than 100 million in a lifetime without giving millions and millions away to relatives or living so extravagantly, they can't go into heaven anymore. The bankers that earn so much are very productive, because they secured income for their banks even though it came out the taxpayers pocket. So I can see why you think more productivity means more rewards

 

[maxpi]

There was an author on Coasttocoast last night...

http://www.amazon.com/Looting-Ameri...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254697350&sr=8-1

Really convincing guy... he says it all started in the 70's with the big deregulation push that is still going on today...

He didn't address the problem of productivity at all though.. but deregulation and jobless recoveries absolutely points to the rich getting richer and the poor getting left in the dust.. oh and keeping the borders open to bring in millions of workers... really brilliant in the face of everything else that is going on, just the real crowning glory of the leadership of the US...