<p>edvest: National security, for one, with Bush’s administration bumping around leaking all sorts of crap for PR purposes, including the latest thing which is the fact that certain private intelligence firms had (until the leak) access to certain al-Quaeda websites and were able to get things including new video communiques before release. No more of that. Meanwhile, Bush is going all over the place bleating about how any kind of oversight of his various unconstitutional, illegal programs would destroy the country’s national security. As if.</p>
<p>Yeah, edvest, I feel so much safer now that Osama has been captured. Mission accomplished!</p>
<p>Higherlead: Happy to. While there are numerous sources confirming this basic fact, perhaps the least controversial is the IRS. See the chart called SOI Bulletin article - Individual Income Tax Rates and Tax Shares, Table 5 at this site: <a href=“http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=133521,00.html[/url]”>http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=133521,00.html</a> Unfortunately their current tables only go back twenty years, but the trend is unmistakeable. Between 1986 and 2005, the following things happened: Adjusted for inflation, the income at the 99th % of taxpayers increased by 72% in constant dollars. At the 95th percentile the increase was 31%. At the 90th percentile it was 20%, at the 75th is was just 8%. At the 50th percentile there was no increase in real income at all. Between 1986 and 2005 the share of reportable income earned by the top 1% of taxpayers increased from 11% to 21%; the income share of the bottom 50% decreased from 16.6% to 12.8%</p>
<p>That’s just the most recently reported 20 years. The trend actually goes back to the late 70’s, early 80s. There is an overwhelming abundance of statistical evidence of this - to me - extraordinarily significant and disturbing trend, yet most people - obviously yourself included - have no clue that it exists.</p>
<p>You might stop and ponder why that is.</p>
<p>kluge, your view looks at “share” which is not related to your view that the “poor are getting poorer”. In reality, the poverty rate in your lifetime has come down quite dramatically - from 22.4% in 1959 to 12.3% in 2006. This compares to an average poverty rate of 13.3% during the Clinton years.<br>
<a href=“http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html[/url]”>http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html</a></p>
<p>You are fixated in the disparity between rich and poor but continue to ignore the fact that the greatest disparity existed during the Clinton years and the gap actually narrowed under Bush.</p>
<p>I’m also a very patriotic conservative and agree (sadly) with Higherlead. The talk by Vermont and some southern states about secession is certainly noteworthy. Although I wouldn’t be sorry to wave goodbye to California. (Kidding, sort of).</p>
<p>"which is not related to your view that the “poor are getting poorer”. </p>
<p>Do we ever get to know who the “poor” or “uninsured” are? I would like to know.</p>
<p>Oh my mistake! Since the Great Society programs were put in place, 40 years ago, the poor are no longer with us.</p>
<p>“Oh my mistake! Since the Great Society programs were put in place, 40 years ago, the poor are no longer with us.”</p>
<p>Wouldn’t you want to know who they are? To know how much of the problem is behavioral and try to change it? What if giving money to someone isn’t enough?</p>
<p>Some people in this forum seem to be saying there is something wrong about being successful. Do we need a socialist systems where producers and non-producers make the same amount of $money ? We all know the outcome of the great communist experiment. Lack of motivation killed all incentives and innovation. They couldnt compete. Boris Yeltsin put the final nail in that coffin by appearing together with Gorbachev and said “communism…I wish they had tried it somewhere else first”. Let me ask this question - do you want to share your hard-earned wealth with people who had little, whatever their circumstances are ?</p>
<p>“Let me ask this question - do you want to share your hard-earned wealth with people who had little, whatever their circumstances are ?”</p>
<p>Nope.</p>
<p>I will show them how to fish, but people’s got to make their own way. Jesus did that too.</p>
<p>“do you want to share your hard-earned wealth with people who had little, whatever their circumstances are ?”</p>
<p>I prefere to share yours with them. You’d be a better person for helping others and I could take credit for helping others. Best of all the good works and moral superiority wouldn’t cost me a dime.</p>
<p>Its easy to champion the cause of the downtrodden by talking the talk, especially after getting such high from reading liberal underground press, grumble about disparity of wealth without giving thoughts to how most of us are ultimately responsible for being where we are, in an open society like ours. But walking the walk isn’t so easy, is it ?</p>
<p>
Actually, yourworld, nobody said that but you. So why did you say it? Did it make you feel smart or superior to make up a stupid statement, accuse someone else of making it, and then argue against it? Most of the snippy arguments about how stupid liberals are seem to follow this path (well trod by Ruch Limbaugh, et al): create a straw man, slay it, and crow about how great you and your fellow true believers are. Sad, yourworld. Just sad.</p>
<p>Fundingfather - I’ve actually come to expect better of you. Try to keep up: The IRS statistics show that there’s been absolutely no real income growth at the 50th percentile over the past 20 years, while the closer you got to the top, the larger the growth of wealth - at the 99th percentile, 72%. That’s absolute, inflation-adjusted dollars, not just share of the pie. At the 50th percentile, 20 years of national economic growth and none of it trickled down that far. The rising tide hasn’t lifted those boats an inch. </p>
<p>The IRS stats don’t break down the income below the 50th percentile, but the shrinking piece of the pie below the midline demonstrates that the trend continues down below 50% as the rich keep getting richer - both absolutely and relatively - and the middle class doesn’t.</p>
<p>Your “poverty line” statistic is both irrelevant and misrepresented by you. The number of people below the poverty line - most of who are not income earners to begin with - have stayed relatively stable since - yes - Johnson’s War on Poverty. It then rose during the Reagan/Bush years, so Clinton inherited about a 15% rate, reduced to around 12% by the end of Clinton’s administration, and climbing again under Bush2.</p>
<p>But that is not relevant to the steady erosion of the position of the middle class and working poor. The average American man turning 30 today earns less than the average 30 year old man did 30 years ago. Proud of that, guys? Every generation since the depression has left their kids better off - as an entire generation - than their own was. Until now. And it’s not because of the liberals.</p>
<p>I see the poor every day in my neighborhood, and not one of them is working. And, our poor are not poor. They have big screen tv’s, access to free medicines and vaccines, free transportation, free day care… the list is endless. Heck, with free breakfast and free lunch, they hardly have to feed their own children.</p>
<p>Kluge, I completely doubt your stats. And, they might be true in your neighborhood, but they are not in mine.</p>
<p>What makes you think our kids are not better off than the generation before them? Many, even most, have cars. 90% of them have cell phones, computers, ipods… what do they NOT have that I had? Health insurance? Please! I never had it till I went to college and was forced to take what the college required. Access to higher education? ANYONE can go to college. Access to employment? I could shovel **** in a barn all day for $1.25 an hour - they can work at McDonald’s for $8/hr, and eat for free while they’re there.</p>
<p>I just don’t buy this crap about the poor. Go to Chad if you want to see poor. Or Ruwanda, or rural Chile. No Americans are poor. Some are just less rich than others.</p>
<p>Fencersmother, I don’t question for a minute that you doubt my stats. The fact that they come from the IRS (and you can find them by following a link from the rushlimbaugh.com website, or used to be able to, anyway) won’t make a difference. You’re going to believe what you feel like believing.</p>
<p>Such hostility ! Kluge. All you talked about was the disparity between rich and poor. Read your own posts at #38, #43. You all but indicted the affluents, chosen to disregard maybe at all of them got rich from trust funds. Yeah I stand by my comment that some people think there is something wrong about being successful and affluent.</p>
<p>Can you pass the litmus test yourself - will you share your wealth with the people you champion, regardless of their circumstances ?</p>
<p>
You want to show where you find that in anything I wrote? Point out the words? I don’t know if you’re unable or simply unwilling to follow the actual public policy issue I wrote about - the increasing stratification of wealth in America. I’ve got nothing against affluent people, and have never suggested that there shouldn’t be more and less financially successful individuals and families. What I wrote about was the fact that while up until about 30 years ago, the “rising tide lifted all boats” - that is, increase in national wealth resulted in an increase in everyone’s wealth - the rich got richer, the poor got less poor, and the middle class also shared in the overall financial improvement - over the past three decades that has changed, and the increase in the national wealth has gone exclusively to the affluent to the exclusion of the poor and middle class. And that statement is a provable and proven fact, not just an opinion.</p>
<p>It’s a national phenomenon, not an issue involving individuals. I don’t expect anyone to refrain from working to achieve financial security for themselves and their families - just the opposite. What I do object to is the campaign to ensure that future increases in national wealth will all be funneled to the top, a recent trend which began around 1980. Where earlier in the 20th century the gap between rich and poor maintained a relatively stable balance (the rich always richer, but the ratio of wealth between rich and poor remaining the same as all economic classes improved their lot in a growing economy) that balance has disappeared.</p>
<p>The simplest example of this is the increase in CEO pay relative to the average salary of rank and file workers. Other aspects include the dramatic decrease in overall effective tax rates for the wealthy while the middle class and poor pay a higher percentage of their incomes in various overt and hidden taxes, and the reduction or elimination of government support for services used by the middle class such as higher education.</p>
<p>I realize that this is a little more complex than the bumper sticker level of schoolyard taunts the right wing prefers to serve up to garner support for its various malign policies. But if you can, ask yourself this: Do you want your grandchildren to live in a society where 1% of the population is fabulously wealthy, maybe 9% live a middle class life such as most of us enjoy, and the other 90% spend their entire lives in debt, with no realistic hope of making the jump to the next socio-economic level? Because that’s the direction we’re headed. And whether my grandchildren are in the 1%, the 9%, or the 90%, I think that kind of a country would not be a good place to live.</p>
<p>
it’s not that a flat tax is not economically viable … it’s because advocating for a flat tax (or pretty flat tax) is political suicide. A flat tax would not raise the tax burden on all Americans a substantial amount … it raises the tax burden of the very rich a ton … (and depending in how flat you go the poor also) … and raising the taxes of the very rich substantially is a “third rail” proposal for any candidate.</p>
<p>Kluge your numbers only show that the gap between the rich and poor has increased not that “the poor are poorer”. I would rather have 10% of a 1 lb bag of potato chips than 50% of a 2 oz. bag.</p>
<p>As long as my standard of living is improving why should I care how wealthy George Soros becomes? I might be annoyed by how he chooses to spend that wealth but not that he has it to spend.</p>