Income Growth Over Time

[maxpowr9]

Add bribery and kickbacks to that list.

It is an inequitable system, and that is anti-liberty. And when fees are charged to one person and not to another, for the same exact thing, that is corruption, pure and simple. That it is set up to fleece the poor and use the take to reward the rich is all the more despicable.

Would you rather have a debtor's prison reinstated or even worse gallows?

 

[Kulindahr]

Would you rather have a debtor's prison reinstated or even worse gallows?

That would fit with the present system -- so why should I want it? It's not an alternative -- an alternative would be fixing things so the wealthy aren't unjustly rewarded for being wealthy, with rewards filched from the pockets of the poor.

 

[laikaNYC]

I would like to see a lot of Wall Street tycoons to face those gallows.

Is that the belief amongst most Socialists?

 

[palemale]

Is that the belief amongst most Socialists?

Most people who believe in justice and fairness believe a lot of bankers and Wall Streeters ought to be in jail. I realize it would be an inconvenience for you, taking that long bus ride upstate one Saturday a month to visit your friends, but at least you would get some fresh air.

 

[Kulindahr]

Most Socialists believe that the Wall Street tycoons who got us into this mess need to face jail time, Laika.

I can think of five or six right off the bat. Let's see: the CEO of Countrywide; the CEO of BOA; the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros, and JPMorgan—all of these men played Parcheesi with other people's money, lost trillions of $ in the process, and got bonuses in the multibillion$$ range from the taxpayers.

The funny thing about this crazy USA is that if you get mugged on Main Street, they give you 25-to life; you get mugged on Wall Street, and you get off with a slap on the hand, or even Scot-free.

That sickens me to the core of my soul.

Yes sir, I think they deserve the gallows. Most other Socialists would be satisfied with a life term.

I'd settle for garnishing their wages, leaving them with minimum wage, and distribute the funds to the people they screwed over.

 

[EastMed]

Normally, I would side with you on economic issues but I stand against you here. You are blinded by your own hatred to see the truth. It comes down to one word: risk. Low income people typically have low credit scores due to either defaulting on a loan, making late payments or little diversity in assets. Wealthy people usually have good credit scores for the opposite reasons and therefore, have the ability to get lower rates due to being less risky.

Sure it kind of sucks with the current system but it is makes sense from a business standpoint.

Risk has been abolished for the rich and powerful. Instead, they get bailouts, tax reliefs and write-offs.
Risk is for the rest of the people.

 

[Kulindahr]

Risk has been abolished for the rich and powerful. Instead, they get bailouts, tax reliefs and write-offs.
Risk is for the rest of the people.

Yes. And they have financial "instruments" such that if we make money, they make money, and if we lose money, they make money. The system is rigged, and it's primarily the Republicans who have rigged it, though the Democrats have done their share by creating regulatory agencies which end up populated with people from the sectors they're supposed to regulate, and they make regulations which result in the big corporations continuing to dominate and the little guys shut out.

 

[Kulindahr]

Checkmate.
Translation: you kicked his ass.

Nice hidden message.

I'd just like to note here that if the wealthiest 400 households in the U.S. turned over half their wealth, they could double the wealth of the poorest 40 million households. If they shared their wealth equally with the bottom end, they could double the wealth of about half of the country. If they signed over everything except a billion apiece to the federal government, there would be no deficit this next year.

 

[EastMed]

More interesting data on income, wealth, wages, etc

http://www.stanford.edu/group/scspi/

 

[Kulindahr]

^ I believe the correct Latin is
"quod erat demonstrandum".

 

[Kulindahr]

The heresy that riches mean God's favor has been around since before Job... which depending on your chronology, was somewhere around 2000 B.C.

 

[Kulindahr]

Modern-day Christians can read. You'd think all they'd have to do is pick up a Bible. They have no excuse!

Homosexuality is only mentioned in the Bible, what? Two or three times? By contrast, anti-richman sentiment is plastered all over the Bible.

But yet, modern-day Christians vilify the gays, while turning a blind eye to the follies of the rich.

Arguably it's not mentioned at all.

But as I said, the heresy that wealth means God's favor is ancient and lies deep near the heart of people. That's why it gets yelled at over and over. Yet you're right: that it gets yelled at so often should jump out and strangle their "wordly lusts".

BTW, in the Bible, lust for wealth and lust for sex are the same thing. They should be condemning their accumulation of wealth at least as vigorously as they protest the "abomination" of homosexuality. Wealth may not be called an abomination, but the way Jesus talked, it's a bigger threat to the soul.

 

[jackoroe]

^Jackaroe gave us a cite recently that supported the notion that the gap between the rich and the poor was the lowest in 1976. (Jackaroe, you're your own worst enemy.)

Here's what happened:

In the 70s, the rich were taxed at 70%+. They got together and said,"We worked hard for it, and we want to keep it. How do we go about lowering our taxes? There are not enough of us; we don't have the votes."

So someone said,"We need to brainwash the masses. How do we do this? We can do it through religion."

So rich man Jerry Falwell got started with his Moral Majority, and now toothless America drinks the Kool-Aid of the Republican Party—voting, year after year, against their own self-interest.

Unions were disbanded (it's been growing less and less each year) and corporations were given tax breaks to outsource their jobs overseas.

And so the rich got taxed less and less, and grew richer and richer, and now the gap between the rich and the poorest has grown to 1922 levels (Jackaroe's own cite.)

Quod est demonstatum.

Close, but no cigar. While tax rates were 70%, nobody paid them at that rate. Remember we could deduct the three martini lunch and credit card interest. The reason for the relative equality in 1976 was the recession of 1974-75. Average people didn't become more wealthy, rich people lost their shirts. Or you can feel free to argue that Gerald Ford was an anti-capitalist redistributor of wealth and Jimmy Carter was a friend of the Leisure Class. I don't think that argument works too well. But have at it, should you feel so inclined.

The fact is that taxes didn't change much until Reagan changed them in 1981.

 

[Kulindahr]

Quoted for excellence.

This is one of the best posts I've ever seen here on JUB.

I'd say you're going to make my head swell, but I have a cold that already did that just fine.

If "fine" can be applied to the condition.

 

[jackoroe]

That's right, Jackaroe. We'd had 70-90% income tax rates, from WW2 all the way until 1981, until Ronald Reagan did his voodoo. And almost overnight—a 2000% rise in the deficit. Did I say 2 thousand percent? I think it was actually more than that.

What was the name of that Orwell book (or was it HGWells) where they taught people that "black" was really "white", and so on?

Ronald Reagan did that. Lowering taxes was supposed to increase revenue. (snicker) And this was supposed to pay for itself (laughing out loud). And this wealth created was supposed to trickle down. (Now, I'm peeing my pants from laughter.)

Yeah, right.

And now, according to your own sources, the gap between the rich and the poor is at the same level as it was in 1922.

(Hugs and kisses anyway, man.)

Real sorry about your incontinence issue, buddy! Anyway, the tax cuts you've derided resulted in an increase in tax revenues from $407,620,000,000 in 1981 to $607,700,000,000 in 1988 which is about a 50% increase give or take. So, if we have a significant increase in deficits, its because we're spending too much, Deficits are always a function of spending and not of income. It's that way in your personal life and it's the same way for the government.

Actually my citation was regarding the amount of wealth controlled by the wealthy vs. everybody else. And yes, it has been pretty consistent for the last 89 years, so is there a point your trying to make?


http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/...tack=1&size=m&title=&state=US&color=c&local=s

 

[Kulindahr]

Real sorry about your incontinence issue, buddy! Anyway, the tax cuts you've derided resulted in an increase in tax revenues from $407,620,000,000 in 1981 to $607,700,000,000 in 1988 which is about a 50% increase give or take. So, if we have a significant increase in deficits, its because we're spending too much, Deficits are always a function of spending and not of income. It's that way in your personal life and it's the same way for the government.

No, it isn't -- that's ridiculous.

If a family has both parents working, and one loses the job, that's going to create a deficit. If they both lose their jobs, that will create a huge deficit.

If you want to balance a budget, you need income.

And the boost in revenues due to lower tax cuts is a special case situation in economics; that curve is not universally applicable. Specifically, historically, cutting taxes for the wealthy below about a third has no beneficial effect on revenues.

The people who voted and agreed to keep the tax cuts for the wealthy were morons -- IMO, traitorous morons determined to turn the country into a banana republic. They should have let all the tax cuts expire but raised the individual exemption to $10k -- that would have been a move that would help revenues.

 

[bankside]

Rather than bitching about the rich and hoping for government to do something about it, the other option would be to use that freedom of association you have to establish unions and negotiate better terms with them.

 

[Kulindahr]

I do agree with you on one central point: if they're going to lower taxes, they are going to have to lower spending, too. Tax cuts for the rich don't pay for themselves. I believe that that has been conclusively proven.

Actually, there's a point at which they do. I forget the figure at the moment, but I think it's upwards of 2/3 (67%). Lower them very far, though, and it begins to depend on aspects of the economy such as how much is in manufacturing, how much unused manufacturing capacity exists, interest rates, etc. When their rates are under 1/3 already, the effect on the economy is actually negative (just as when economic conditions are in a certain space, taking a dollar in taxes from the economy actually results in a loss of more than a dollar, despite the fact that the dollar is respect by the government).

 

[Ninja108]

The rich get richer, the have nots get poorer.

 

[Kulindahr]

Rather than bitching about the rich and hoping for government to do something about it, the other option would be to use that freedom of association you have to establish unions and negotiate better terms with them.

It's not that simple. The flow of wealth preferentially to those who already have it is built into the entire economic system, through laws and regulations along with actions by corporations.

When we're looking at a situation where the top 400 wealthiest households could have their worth stripped to "only" one billion each and it would eliminate a deficit of over a trillion dollars, there's something seriously wrong, and it has been for some time.