Someone try to justify this.

I do agree with your post, but government policies such as shipping our jobs overseas and bringing goods made with slave labor into the country literally prevent Americans from making money producing those goods. Super corporations such as Wal-Mart make it impossible for small businesses to survive. We are just now feeling the effects of these misguided policies.

 

We tried that in the 2000s. We got the housing bubble and the worst recession in 80 years.

Yep, imagine if Romney had been elected. Running up more debt huge tax cuts for the richest, cutting social programs that help the poorer, because heaven knows, the 1% getting 20% of that nations' income and having about 40% of the nation's wealth, double from just 30 years ago, just isn't enough for the poor darlings, is it?

But I'm not sure how giving them even more of the nation's income to stick in their offshore accounts would help the economy.

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That's not government policies. That's free enterprise.

 

When your neighbor the CEO earns more bucks by suppressing your wages, or your paying higher FICA taxes so your next door neighbor can enjoy huge tax advantages on his investment income, then you should fee there is one less dollar out there for you.

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It started well before that, my friend.

 

Reverse trickle down.

Raise taxes on the uber rich. Cut taxes on the middle and poorer workers. Enable unions to leverage better wages and benefits for the wage earner. Beef up overtime laws so fewer are exempted. Make investment taxes the same as earned income taxes so our tax policy doesn't incentivize speculative investment (that has led to to major investment bubbles over the past 13 years) over earned income. Make estate taxes equivalent to income taxes so that working people aren't taxed more to support tax breaks for trust fund babies. Increase the middle class. Tax the idle wealth of the uber rich and use the money to rebuild our infrastructure and get more people working.

When the middle class are back to work, in will increase their wages, and they will have money to spend. They will spend the money, creating more demand, more production, more jobs, and more profit. Everybody wins, not just the 1%.

Henry Ford understood this. He paid his workers double the going rate, even though it hurt his immediate bottom line, because he knew those workers would take that extra money an buy his cars. And they did.

We need Henry Ford thinking today. But what dominates is making more profit for the 1% by squeezing wages of workers as much as possible. ]

So we need to change our policies away from "trickle down" and stop worrying about pampering the rich and instead rebuilding our middle class.

 

You're saying that the free market caused the housing bubble? Your kind need to slapped down - and HARD. That is a bald-faced BS claim. The housing bubble was caused by GOVERNMENT manipulation of the free market.

We've now spent 5 trillion dollars on poverty. It hasn't changed the conditions of poverty, but it has made those in poverty much less human, and far more dependent.

About anything.

You wouldn't know economics if Milton Friedman raised you from birth.

NAFTA had nothing to do with. Huge business regulations which create a far higher barrier to entry also had nothing to do with it.

Hard. VERY HARD.

 

Justify what? Table makes sense to me....

 

Government? With the "industry can regulate itself" Republicans in charge? They stood back and did nothing while shoddy brokers and the unregulated CDS market generated huge profits for companies and bonuses for Wall Street while housing prices skyrocketed to absurd levels.

But "Mr. Ownership Society" was only too happy to push more people into homes, I agree there.

Don't hurt your hand slapping yourself, there.

Poverty was doing a lot better until we switched gears to trickle down in 1981.

About anything would be an improvement over giving them more of the nation's income and wealth to stick in their offshore accounts.

Self serving and baseless ad hom by someone who can't defend their arguments legitimately./

Prove your claim, Identify these huge business regulations and explain how they've created a far higher barrier. They don't seem to be stopping corporations from making record profits, do they?

 

Large companies are reaping the reward because they are expanding in other countries (Wal-Mart is not the only corporation in the world).

 

Productivity (the measure of output vs time worked) has gone up 97% in the last ten years.

The people that did it saw about 3% increase in wealth. The rest went to the wealthy investors.

The rich have the ability to finance propaganda machines. They have the ability to buy elections and create laws that favor them such as tax laws. They have the money to leverage corporations into sending more and more money up to investors, and less and less into growth and diversification. They have the power to force other companies to sell, thereby eliminating "ruinous competition". They use tactics perfected by Meyer Lansky that were once illegal, but are now simply "the way of doing business".

This is a direct throwback to Morganization. J.P. Morgan (and others) did it that way, and that was a major factor in the collapse of 1929.

And it took World War II to bring us out of THAT mess. What will we do this time? Mushroom clouds, anyone?

 

Odd isn't it, that the GOP lost the 2012 election for the WH and also failed to take control of the Senate.

 

Is there any graph that shows % of income by year starting in say 1900.

I'd be interested to see that instead of "change by %" from 79 alone.

Anyone have that?

 

Taxcutter says:
You ready to tackle the problem? It starts with "rescind 250,000 regulations."

 

The top 1% allows the money to work for them; they don't work for the money.

 

Relaxing regulations that protect citizens from corporations is simply not acceptable.

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So it has nothing to do with tax rates?

 

Sure, starting in 1913.

 

................

 

Taxcutter says:
Then you are prepared to live with the consolidation that a distorted market brings.

 

Thankfully, that is not happening in 99% of the places out there. If you find yourself in a place where that is happening, leave. There are thousands and thousands a great companies out there that pay attractive salaries, bonuses, and benefits.

 

Yes, but only if you have something to offer, like common sense, hard work, or talent. Slackers need not apply.

 

True, and unfortunately more and more slackers are created every day when they listen to this liberal progressive poison of CEO's being evil and businesses are all corrupt.

 

It may be a factor, but a small one.

 

To the contrary, it is happening all over. Wages have barely grown over the past 30 years while top management and over compensation has skyrocket. FICA taxes were raised while investment taxes were cut in half. Middle incomes have stagnated while the 1% tripled.

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If your goal is to see the richest 1% get more and more of the nation's income and wealth, it would.

 

They are reaping greater, record profits at home because they pay crappy wages to workers and reap big profits for top management and owners, whose incomes have sky rocketed while workers incomes have stagnated.

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We've always had regulations. Before and after.

Something changed in 1981:



Trickle down, baby. Designed to make the rich richer. And it worked fabulously.

It just didn't trickle down.

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No (*)(*)(*)(*).

 

The conservative world view.

Raising taxes on the poor, slashing taxes on the rich, gutting unions, letting the MW stagnate, weeking OT laws, reducing safety nets, etc had nothing to do with the fact that the 1% get 20% of the nation's income now versus 10% 30 years ago.

it's just that the 1% worked twice as hard and everyone else got lazy.

Conservatives make sense. If you ignore reality.