Dmtdust wrote:

Oh, one can smell the apathy on HS now days....


http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/201 … _jobs.html

I wouldn't call it apathy. Apathy suggests there should be a viable opposite state of reaction. I would call it resignation. Pretty much nothing the little people can do will ever change the economic status quo for the next foreseeable generations. Politics and protests are a panacea. It seems the entrenched special interests will always take the first cut of whatever puppet government propped up to mollify the people..

Might as well just watch the billionaire oligarchs duke it out over the last of our spoils.

We can use......Sarcasm!

At some point, when I am weary enough of this rat race, I will gladly defenestrate the first one in the building I come across who speaks claptrap out the side of his mouth, but I suspect it will be all for naught as the next man of the people will just sell his soul and our children's future  cheap to the highest bidder.





Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs

for some reason Goober is always the apologist for the uber-wealthy.  I think he has aspirations, or at least wants to be on their coat tails.

Here's another way of looking at it.  If you take the average of the top 1% and the bottom 1%, their average household income is somethinig like $500,000... but if you take the average of the middle 2%, their average household income is about $50000.  Wow, those middle people really suck now.

I found that there daughters will let you in the back door, but that is not an invitation to stay.

Dusty seems to stuck in the zero-sum camp. That any time some rich cat lights his cigar with a $100 bill, he is stealing it out of the mouths of widows and orphans. That any dollar that floats upward is, by definition, being stolen from some laborer and sequestered away in a big safe, taken out only for rolling around in while naked.

It must be true right? After all, there is exactly the same amount of money floating around our country than there was 50 or 100 years ago, right? Or is there less, locked away in all of those basement safes, right? After all, there isn't MORE wealth around, brought into being by the investment of rich industrialists? Or was it created by the spontaneous cooperation of the masses of labor, working for the common good of all mankind?

I would say that the "quality of life" bell curve has moved to the right. What an individual chooses to do with the improvement is up to them.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/19/o … s_march_in

I wasn't referring to you, and if you start using emoticons, I will have to arrange for some enhanced interrogation techniques (but not torture, because Americans don't torture).

Wheelhouse?
Class warfare?
The rich feed all of us?
Confiscate?
Ladder?
Climb out of poverty?

Republican buzzwords?

Fled wrote:

Median household income has declined continuously since 2000, and declined by more than 2% in 2010.  Is that because most people do not want to work, or don't work hard enough?  Don't be idiots.

"Quality of life" almost necessarily declines for the average household when median income declines.

From Wikipedia:

This graph shows income of a given percentage as a ratio to median, for 10th, 20th, 50th, 80th, 90th, and 95th percentile, for 1967–2003.
(50th percentile is 1:1 by definition.)

That shows me that while the top 10% and 20% are getting richer, the bottom 10% and 5% are staying the same, relative to the median. Sure, a slight dip in the last couple of years. (When was that election again, 2008?)

This graph shows the income of the given percentiles from 1947 to 2007, in 2007 dollars.

Wow, in constant dollars the rich are getting richer *than they used to be*. But, shockingly to some, so are the poor. It just pisses some people off that the kinds of people who are rich have doubled their money since 1967, but the poor have only increased it 64%. I guess that's the difference between working in a shop and owning one.

Additionally, don't forget that while the "poorest of the poor", those suffering 5%ers, have *only* increased their constant dollar income 64%, the number of social services and benefits that have been reserved for the poor has increased hugely. In 1967 you didn't get free college tuition, Section 8 vouchers, WIC, bus passes and all of the other stuff that is now considered a "right" by anyone making a certain low income, regardless of how little they have to exert in order to get it.

So, I will agree with your statement that the "inequality in incomes is increasing". Rich people are getting richer faster than poor people are getting richer. But I will still say that the reason that someone gets richer is because they try to be rich. They work hard, earn capital, risk that capital on building more capital and then reinvest that. They *invest* their money, not spend it.

Ill leave you with this:

Percent of households with 2+ income earners, and full-time workers by income.

The bottom 40% of households by income don't have a full time job (at any pay) and haven't worked 50 weeks in the last year. Nor do they have both members of the household working, even if at low pay. But, why should they? After all, they get LESS food, healthcare, housing, medical or school money from the government if they did. All you have to do is cry on the shoulder of your assistance processor once a month and all of that will be taken care of. And you don't even have to pay any taxes to cover it, those poor bastards who go to work every day take care of that. It's a vicious cycle. "Free" money is the most addictive drug of all.

I did a little more research and found that median household income in the US has not declined continuously for the last decade.  There were three years when it actually rose.  However, the overall decline has entered year 11, with the sharpest decline coming in Bush's last year.  The overall decline is now over 7% in the past 11 years.  I assume your comment about the last 2 years is tongue in cheek, since it is apparent that the source of the decline precedes the present administration.  Most economists would say that without the stimulus act, the decline would be significantly greater.

Staying the same relative to the median is not a good thing when the median is declining. 

I don't quibble with your charts, but they don't do anything to support your contempt for the poor, which itself smells a bit like class warfare. 



Source: U.S. Census.

Tall Paul wrote:

Dmtdust wrote:

Yes, wealth has increased for everyone.  The more productive they have become the greater the rewards, right?

Actually, no. Not since Reagan was napping in the White House, at least for people who work for a living.

See my above note on Sarcasm

phreddy wrote:

Fled wrote:

Most economists would say that without the stimulus act, the decline would be significantly greater.

I would agree with this statement.  But, unfortunately, the national median income was propped up with borrowed money.  Obama's plan has been to borrow enough money to buy the votes and repay favors.  With the unlimited power to borrow and print money anyone could maintain the median level of income for a short time, but then the bill comes due.

Oddly enough the borrowing started about the same time that corporations began keeping excess profits from increased productivity while keeping wages flat and hiring 'temporary' workers to fill full time job slots. Now, I wonder why that might be?

Fled wrote:

I don't quibble with your charts, but they don't do anything to support your contempt for the poor, which itself smells a bit like class warfare.

I don't have any contempt at all for the poor. I spent a significant portion of my youth in a family well below the 50th percentile and married a woman who's father was a coal miner and they lived in once of the poorest counties in Pennsylvania, a place that makes Allentown look like Beverly Hills. I never took a vacation that didn't involve sleeping in a tent or on a relatives couch until I was in high school.

What I have contempt for is lazy people or people who would rather stuff their fingers in their ears and flatly refuse to see opportunity when it's kicking them in the nuts. Too many of my relatives sit around and think "I wonder if the sewing factory will ever hire again" or "If it weren't for those evil Chinese, I could get a job at the mill again" when they should be retraining themselves for the few jobs we are allowed to keep in this country and packing the wife and kids in the car to go where the jobs are.

I'm a software developer. My job is just as perilous as any textile or steel mill workers. Any day my job could move to Bangalore and I wouldn't be able to find work. What do I do then? What is the Liberal answer to that question? Go down and apply for assistance and wait around on the dole until the Indians and Pakis nuke each other so I can get my job back? Get my union to "petition" my congress-critter to pass a law protecting my industry by throwing up barriers to free trade? No, I go to school to learn things those offshorers will never know. Usually on Saturday and at night and nobody is paying to send me to. I figure out how to talk to clients, how to use correct English, how to build solutions that solve my client's problems and make them money. It's not easy staying 2 steps ahead of the Wal-Mart of software development, but I was always taught that the time to give up is never! So I go to school, I work on building some companies of my own (not with fat stacks but with sleepless nights) to generate income down the road and I keep a positive attitude. So if that is "contempt", it's only contempt for the laziness in myself and, by proxy, in others.

George Orr wrote:

It's typical of the Right that while they've initiated the class war and are doing all the damage so far, they're the ones howling about a class war.  (Roger Ailes slipped 'em the phrase during the last election cycle.)

Oh, the education process is a long one...

Do you choose your workers based on whose need is greater or whose skill is greater? I just want to know what your clients think about that.

And if your goal is for something other than making money, why do you care what direction the average salary is going?

Oh well, as long as you are happy to give someone a fish, I guess they will be happy to take it. Me? I would rather set up fishing lessons and see who has the gumption to get out of bed early and join me.

Wrapping yourself in Horatio Alger superiority may feel good, but it looks awful. 

In truth, who could argue with a commitment to hard work?  No one, not even your hated (and quite imaginary) liberals.  It is a far better way out of poverty than welfare.  But your whole way of viewing the poor is negative:  they are always entirely at fault, expecting handouts which they easily obtain by crying on the shoulder of a social worker. . . .  Your words suggest contempt although you deny it. 

I'll be spending the next two weeks with villagers in Honduras, where I am sure they are just too lazy to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.  Oh, that's right, they don't own any boots.

I too grew up poor.  At times my parents, along with four kids, rented flats which shared bathrooms with others.  They never owned a home and never had much beyond the very basics.  I was the first in my extended family on either side to graduate from college.  I worked the whole time and nothing was ever given to me.  Maybe this is why people like Goober and me have faith that others can do the same.  Welfare combined with negative incentives for gainful employment, a dose of victimhood, and a constant blame of the "rich" is a debilitating disservice to the poor.

ah297900 wrote:

If I can be exceptional, so can everybody else.

You don't need to be exceptional. But you do need to try your best.  We can afford to help the rest.

phreddy wrote:

I too grew up poor.  At times my parents, along with four kids, rented flats which shared bathrooms with others.  They never owned a home and never had much beyond the very basics.  I was the first in my extended family on either side to graduate from college.  I worked the whole time and nothing was ever given to me.  Maybe this is why people like Goober and me have faith that others can do the same.  Welfare combined with negative incentives for gainful employment, a dose of victimhood, and a constant blame of the "rich" is a debilitating disservice to the poor.

poor family, one of 4 kids, joined the army to get a university degree.

There's lots of paths off the dole... you just have to decide to walk one.

The walk isn't necessarily easy, but it does get you there.