The wealth gap.

It's very important to remember that people who don't like paying tax don't always dislike it because they're personally losing a bit of money. Many don't like it because that money is so often exploited by lazy slackers.

 

Please do not paraphrase me.
And pose it as a question.
I am saying what I wrote above.

1) Eisenhower tax code.
2) A greater percentage of the total currency actively being circulated
and not sequestered.


Moi




And I am saying:

Support the Dual Wall Solution!
Across an immense, unguarded, ethereal border, Canadians, cool and unsympathetic,
regard our America with envious eyes and slowly and surely draw their plans against us.
​

No paraphrasing required.

 

The problem with this is that you're literally making comparisons between First World 'incredible wealth and equality' and First World 'incredible wealth and equality'. You're measuring for the slightest of insults and challenges.

We either compare our lives to the lives of the vast majority of humanity - who are still living the way we did before the Industrial Revolution - or we're just playing at caring.

 

Dude, you should not generalize your personal life experience, there might be lots of other reasons why you're typically the first to be let go despite your meager pay. It's not necessarily reflective of the rest of the business world

 

Do you expect an argument? I was not advocating "equal" distribution of profits, just more equitable... the owner class would still get the lion's share of pie...perhaps a somewhat smaller lion's share

All I am saying is that millions of outsourced jobs together with tens of millions of in-sourced foreign workers create a huge labor market disbalance and deprive the working people (both blue and white collar) of bargaining power. This is not healthy for the economy and for the country, this is why the wealth gap is reaching astronomical heights, this is why the middle class had been struggling and shrinking, until Trump and MAGA came along.

 

Splain it to us Lucy.

 

Republican destruction of unions is the main cause of loss of bargaining power.

 

What did he do?

 

You mean 16 years of Clinton and Obama during which all those union jobs were going to China and tens of millions of illegals were "imported" to compete for those remaining union jobs and destroy their wages?

What has Biden ever in his 50 years in the government done for the unions? Besides groping female union members of course.

He had the magic wand.... oh and the tax reform and the energy independence policies and deregulation, and the revision of horrible Trade agreements, and the crack down on illegal immigration and on outsourcing... But mostly the magic wand of course.

 

In my country the loss of union power is a direct result of far fewer people joining unions. They don't want to pay yearly fees for what they perceive as nothing.

 

Those tax loopholes are built into the system. If our politicians wanted the rich paying their fair share they would be.

 

Some places here in the states you don't get that option if you work in an industry you pay union dues whether you want to or not. I remember a few years back they were trying to make it illegal for unions to do that and they were pissed off.

 

Nope I mean republican destruction of unions is the main cause of loss of bargaining power. What did he do THIS year.

 

you are confused, Clinton and Obama who sent millions of good union jobs to China aren't Republicans. They are proud Democrats.

after 4 years of Trump's record job growth Biden is promising to return to Obama years normalcy of sending these jobs back to China.

 

I wonder how many of those 8 richest American families whose wealth is equivalent to the cumulative wealth of the bottom 50% of the population (or whatever the precise number is) started off dirt poor. Our President isn't even among them, & he started out with at least hundreds of millions. News flash: inherited wealth is a real thing; we don't all begin at the same, "starting line;" not even close.

 

1.This site shows a world map on which you can graphically compare countries' wealth distributions. You choose either, "salaries," or, "wealth," & also which share you wish to see, for example, top 1%, or top 10%, or middle 40%, etc.; then you get a color-coded map (sorry, my phone doesn't take screen shots).

https://wid.world/world/#shweal_p90...se/38.199000000000005/100/curve/false/country

2. This is a list of the 15 countries with the widest gaps between the rich & the poor. The U.S. finishes in the #9-spot.

https://www.usatoday.com/picture-ga...ce=google&itm_medium=amp&itm_campaign=gallery

@Moi621 & @61falcon :
3.This is a basic explanation of the current trend in the wealth gap in the U.S., by the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities. The last cpl. of paragraphs tell you what else is in their report, if you go to the site to look

A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

UPDATED
JANUARY 13, 2020

BY
CHAD STONE

DANILO TRISI

ARLOC SHERMAN

JENNIFER BELTRÁN
The broad facts of income inequality over the past seven decades are easily summarized:

• The years from the end of World War II into the 1970s were ones of substantial economic growth and broadly shared prosperity.
  • Incomes grew rapidly and at roughly the same rate up and down the income ladder, roughly doubling in inflation-adjusted terms between the late 1940s and early 1970s.
  • The gap between those high up the income ladder and those on the middle and lower rungs — while substantial — did not change much during this period.
• Beginning in the 1970s, economic growth slowed and the income gap widened.
  • Income growth for households in the middle and lower parts of the distribution slowed sharply, while incomes at the top continued to grow strongly.
  • The concentration of income at the very top of the distribution rose to levels last seen nearly a century ago, during the “Roaring Twenties.”
• Wealth — the value of a household’s property and financial assets, minus the value of its debts — is much more highly concentrated than income. The best survey data show that the share of wealth held by the top 1 percent rose from 30 percent in 1989 to 39 percent in 2016, while the share held by the bottom 90 percent fell from 33 percent to 23 percent.

Data from a variety of sources contribute to this broad picture of strong growth and shared prosperity for the early postwar period, followed by slower growth and growing inequality since the 1970s. Within these broad trends, however, different data tell slightly different parts of the story, and no single data source is best for all purposes.

This guide consists of four sections. The first describes the commonly used sources and statistics on income and discusses their relative strengths and limitations in understanding trends in income and inequality. The second provides an overview of the trends revealed in those key data sources. The third and fourth sections supply additional information on wealth, which complements the income data as a measure of how the most well-off Americans are doing, and poverty, which measures how the least well-off Americans are doing.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/pover...ics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality

 

What I find interesting is that any call to limit the salaries of athletes, or to make CEO salaries relative to the pay of their employees, is decried as ANTI-CAPITALIST! Yet when Congress has moved to put limits on the damages that juries can award to victims of malpractice-- the only justice afforded them-- after winning their court cases-- no easy feat, as people are more disposed to believe doctors over patients-- the FREE MARKET crowd has had no problem with it.

P.S -- one of my favorite proposed recipes would've made the upper limit that could be awarded for, "pain & suffering," proportional to the suer's annual income because, as we all know, the suffering of a wealthy man deserves far more compensation than the relatively worthless pain of a poor man.

That particular bill failed, but that was decades ago & I wouldn't be surprised if something similar later passed; this is one of those things that, "conservatives," have felt drawn return to, again & again (would it be out of line for me to suggest that this has been at the behest of their insurance company donors?). And I'm sure that Democrats have voted for this, as well.

 

Maybe because it is I am younger than seemingly a lot of posters here, but I have never understood the basis of this belief that the GOP has somehow destroyed unions. They certainly have not embraced helping them expand. The democrats, on the other hand, seem to be making unions moot with inflating wages, mandating health insurance, making everything a federal claim against employers, etc. The liberals seem to have turned the tides on unions themselves with policies that strike at the very heart of the the things unions once delivered more selectively to workers. (not to mention they seem very keen on sending the traditionally unionized jobs overseas in the name of "globalization")

 

I think we are in the age where wealth needs to be circulated. I think we need to look at taxing the annual increased value of assets over a certain level.
I don't know if this is true in America, but a lot of wealth in the UK is in property, but not rental. More just relying on that property value increasing. The money is not needed as an income by the rich so it just sits there, not doing any good for tax or the economy.
This also has another detrimental effect, it keeps house prices high thus making mortgages more expensive for the poor.

 

Didn't read thread. So another thread about a "wealth gap" when the term "wealth" isn't defined? LOL.

OP, you realize that the bogus definition of "wealth" all these collectivist/statist lie narratives use in their INFINITE GREED for raising taxes to fund their do-little jobs/work programs, outrageous pensions and other perqs, bogus grants, bogus gov contracts, media and large corporate crony redistribution $$, etc. doesn't include residential real estate, PERSONAL PROPERTY, intangibles such as inexpensive innovations that bolster QOL for all, not just the rich? No?

Is that an accurate depiction of "wealth" when those things are EXCLUDED? and they always are.

All narratives that rely on abstractions, "wealth" for instance, are lies designed to conceal the true aim, profit for the Complex, the gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-trial lawyer-MSM Complex, not "for the poor" (they must remain poor and ignorant for Complex creeps to profit), for them, the Complex, and not taken from "the rich," but from you and I, the average taxpayers.

If one of them, just ONE of them, would drop the infinite lies and simply state, "I want YOU to pay more taxes so I can make more," i'd respect that. Disagree, but at least respect the honesty. But of course we never get that, just infinite dissimulation ala "wealth/income gaps" and all their many other bogus, self-serving narratives.

 

If the top 1% owns 80% of the wealth then that wealth can, at most, be liquidated at 20 cents on the dollar. In the US, that wealth is not mostly in land---it is in stocks whose value is determined how much the last share sold fetched. You wouldn't be flooding the market with cash. You would be flooding it with increasingly inexpensive bordering on worthless stocks. It takes other rich people willing to buy large quantities who wouldn't want it because they would just be taxed out of it as well. Before long, you would run out of such investors other than sovereign wealth funds like Saudi Arabia or China buying up the US companies.

Now the UK land situation is a disaster. Basing even the rent scales on market rates instead of income is pricing a lot of people out of even Council housing. The government has a vested interest in keeping their estate rents high. Politically, even if you could get that land out of the hands of the wealthy, it would likely be rewilded in the name of saving the planet right now as opposed to being made available for development.

Anyway, income is a much easier taxation for target than "wealth" and taxing it only serves to curb acquisition of more "wealth" without actually destroying any that you already have.

 

Those are your solutions to a problem that doesn't exist. Thats the issue.

If people are able to create wealth at will, with effort, risk, and innovation, then why do you propose government involvement and policy to close the wealth gap?

 

Where is the wealth gap most prevalent? Traditionally democrat run states and cities.

 

Ok, then I will rephrase.

Are the employees will to cover losses in proportion to the rate at which they enjoy profits?

Often this argument seems to indicate that some people desire profits when times are good but without responsibilty for the cash to start to invest to realize the profit or potential losses.