How Wealth Inequality Spiraled Out of Control

--and this goes to the problem that we can ALWAYS say that we need to 'shrink' the gap. Things are either "equal" or they are "not equal" and this is a reality that we need to understand.

On the other hand, if you have some kind of quantified percentage w/ reasoning as to the resultant harm/benefit, I'm all ears.

 

It was reducing taxes on the rich and cutting regulations that made Trump's economy take off, he made it possible for companies to once again be able to compete with other nations who taxed and paid less.

Asked in 2016 if he would bring his billions in off shore billions home, he said no.( .Apple CEO Says Company Won't Bring Home Money Parked ...

https://www.forbes.com/.../08/17/apple-ceo-says-company-wont...

Aug 17, 2016 · Apple CEO Says Company Won't Bring Home Money Parked Overseas Until Tax Rates Are 'Fair'. Tech giant Apple is hoping that the United States' tolerance for pain is a little bit lower than mine. In an interview with The Washington Post last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook discussed his tenure at Apple and, not surprisingly,...

But one year later,after Trump's tax cuts

Newscentermaine.com | Why Apple is bringing billions back home
www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/nation-now/...
A second corporate campus, an additional 20,000 workers and a $350 billion commitment. That's Apple's pledge to the U.S. As the tech giant announced a sweeping set of moves Wednesday to bring back billions of its offshore cash and spur economic growth. The plan also includes paying $38 billion in taxes.

 

Here is why Obama lost so many good jobs. He chased companies away with his health care, record regulations and the highest corporate taxes in the whole industrial world. (In a race to the finish, Obama administration presses ahead ...
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-a-race-to-the...
Cached
As the future Trump administration begins to take shape, the Obama White House is engaged in a frenzied, final effort to put in place as many new rules and regulations as time allows.

20,642 New Regulations Added in the Obama Presidency
www.dailysignal.com/2016/05/23/20642-new...
Cached
More than $22 billion per year in new regulatory costs were imposed on Americans last year, pushing the total burden for the Obama years to exceed $100 billion annually.

Does the U.S. Have the Highest Corporate Tax Rates in the ...

https://www.financialsense.com/cont.../matthew-kerkhoff/does...

Proponents of this thesis will draw attention to the fact that the US has the highest corporate income tax rate in the industrialized world, currently at 39.1% (based on the 35% federal rate and the average rate levied by US states), see chart below. This high rate puts companies at a …




But after Trump cut both.

Trump's Policy "Magic Wand" Boosts Manufacturing Jobs 399% In First 26 Months Over Obama's Last 26 https://www.forbes.com/.../trumps-policy-magic-wand.../...

 

Back in the 50's Europe and Asia were still trying to recover from the war. America made most everything. Corporations were swimming in money and the 91% tax didn't hurt them one bit. Prices were cheap back then and you could make it on one income. But today is nothing like the 50's. We make almost nothing that the average person across the globe can buy. Most of our exports are in food, big ticket items we sell to other governments or companies, like weapons, locomotives, construction equipment, tool and dyes, etc. Today our industries are fighting for their life with most of the industrial world and we are losing. Taxes are lower and everything else is much higher. My first new car back in the 60's was a Plymouth Duster. Cost me $2,500.00. I was making around $5.00 an hour. My last vehicle I bought was a 2013 Chrysler Minivan. Cost $38,000.00 and I was making $15.25 an hour. Do you think wages has kept up with prices? Bought my first home in 1960, for $8,200.00 and was making around $85.00 a week. Wife didn't work.

 

We could say that, but we need to say it now, more than ever.

No one is saying 'must be equal' we are saying 'more equal'.

Neoliberalism is what got us here, and so, getting rid of neoliberalism will be the right direction to move towards.

 

I'm more into paying the lower workers more, and the top workers less (which is done in Government, mostly), than I am into thinking of shrinking the gap via taxation on corporations. This is what the billionaire financier Nick Hanauer is recommending.

And so, I can live with the corporate tax, but I'm not okay with lowering taxes on the superrich.

 

Most of the super rich got that way by investing in businesses. Businesses hire the people who work for them. The big wage gap started with Carter and deregulation and holding down wages of Federal workers by preventing them from striking over wages and hours. Those two things had a huge effect on wages, nation wide. We never recovered from that.

 

Dubya Bush handed him the worst economy since the Great Depression. <-period

Here is why Benedict Donald's ecomonmy boomed.

It was booming when President Obama handed it off to him. <-period

 

Except for all the men who ARE doing it, of course.

If your sample group is working and middle class people hubristically attempting to live in the most expensive cities on earth (IOW, way beyond their means), then your results are going to be utterly screwed. Try the same measure in a country town and you'll get very different results.

There's no doubt that a wealth gap exists - but it primarily exists in Big Cities, and is almost exclusively a result of people who can't afford to live there, refusing to adapt to the changing landscape. Big Cities haven't been affordable for ordinary folk for at least a decade. If you've stayed beyond that and struggle as a result, that's a personal problem - nothing to do with the system.

 

Good to know!

 

Neoliberals run your Democrats.

 

That's just it, inflation is a transfer of wealth from those who can't hedge to those who can. The folks with accruing assets are ahead of inflation, which you ad me and average folks paid for in eroded dollars.

But, both parties are guilty of deficit spending and causing inflation.

The massive shift from America to China manufacturing occurred during Reagan and Bush 2. both neoliberals.

Neoliberalism is widening the gap much faster.

$5.65 in the 60s was what my dad made, and he supported five kids and a wife.

 

You continue to make this error in assuming I'm against wealth, or working hard, or investing, etc.

Quit making that argument because my point has nothing to do with it. The point is inequality, different subject.

The inequality gap started with Reagan. That's what the charts show.

 

Which is why I used the term 'average'.

Yes, neoliberalism has led to that. Neoliberalism let the free market reign in real estate, a limited resource, which led to the high prices.

 

I"m not seeing much neoliberalism in Biden.

 

Sure they may have started with Reagan, it takes time for those changes that Carter made to take hold. Reagan had the second highest job creation when he left. Only Clinton had more and Clinton did that with the first Republican Congress in over 30 years. But it was the changes that Carter made that increased the wage gap and held down wages. But they said the same thing about Trump. The wage gap increased with the tax cuts to the rich, but did we lose with it? No, Trump had a hot economy before the virus hit us. The Middle Class saw their largest wage gain in their history The Blue Collar worker also saw big wage gains. Yet the tax cuts saw the rich get richer. But Americans got richer too.

This data is based on a report released by Sentier Research analyzing the Census Bureau’s monthly Current Population Survey.
As noted in the op-ed, authored by Stephen Moore, real median household income is at an all-time high:
“Real median household income—the amount earned by those in the very middle—hit $65,084 (in 2019 dollars) for the 12 months ending in July. That’s the highest level ever and a gain of $4,144, or 6.8%, since Mr. Trump took office. By comparison, during 7½ years under President Obama—starting from the end of the recession in June 2009 through January 2017—the median household income rose by only about $1,000.”
The below chart highlights the strong Trump wage growth.


Economy & Politics: Income Gap Grows under Trump, Obama — but ...
www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/income-gap-growth...
Indeed, in a bit more than half of his term, Trump’s $5,003 mountain of growth in median household income is 346 percent higher than Bush-Obama’s $1,444 molehill of marginal middle-class earnings. https://www.nationalreview.com/.../income-gap-growth.../

 

Neoliberalism has been practiced since Reagan, (perhaps Carter, too, but accellerated under Reagan) and it hadn't been reversed by any president since Reagan.

Pinning it on one president is specious logic.

 

Dude, no one sees much of anything in Great-grand-gramps.

Doesn't change the fact that they're in service to the corporatists and elites - more so than the other side, since they strive to ensure the people commit their very souls to those elites.

At least the Right still wants to see ordinary folk retain their personal power - property and collective, etc.

 

An urban man living way beyond his means is in no way 'average'. He's clearly made an unusual decision.

 

I've lived in San Diego for 35 years.

Why should I move? Why? Because neoliberalism has allowed the land prices to go so high, now I must move where I've called home for half of my life?

There is NOTHING unusual about my desire to remain here.

 

Standing on a principal instead of being responsible, is an indicator of privilege - privelege of either mind, or means. And privilege of mind is the most objectionable. It means complete lack of regard for one's fellows - those who'll have to support that stand on that principal.

 

If you had regard for your fellow citizens, you'd not support neoliberalism.

Spare me the high horse talk.

 

Perhaps what ur saying could be that u want incomes to be "closer" to equal than they are now. Once again the problem is that if I were say, king of the United States & I announced some kind of royal edict I could make incomes "closer" to equal than they are now. Afterward you could say (arbitrarily) that they still weren't equal enough, or maybe you'd say they were too equal & you wanted me to make them less equal.

Can u see how silly this is becoming?

None of this contradicts the fact that we can in fact have problems w/ income inequality, and that can happen when there is a dip in the middle of the graph of income versus population distribution --this tells us that there are a lot of rich folks and a lot of poor folks but no movement in between. That's not the case in the U.S. tho because there's a lot of movement. Most folks are born poor, learn a trade, get rich, and spend it & die poor. People tend to move from one income bracket to another.

I'm not making this up, we can prove this by looking at age versus income graphs & we see (once again) a bell shaped curve.

OK, if it's important to u we can hate the neoliberals. Now that that's taken care of, let's please get back to income distribution.

 

Perhaps the average citizen on the right .. certainly not the leadership who have done little but stifle personal power in their authoritarian rage.

 

1) Most of the "Super Rich" got that way the old fashioned way .. They inherited it
2) The income inequlity gap has to do with a whole lot more than Carter preventing Fed workers from striking ... things such as outsourcing our manufacturing sector - allowing Oligopolies to flourish and engage in anti competitive practices putting downward pressure on wages.