<p>I don’t see how Bush fits into your argument, as articulated by the Financial Times of London. Nor am I persuaded that American workers are suffering with stagnating incomes due to a relative handful who are making extraordinary sums. It’s not a zero-sum prospect (our economy, that is.)</p>
<p>This argument is not unlike that made against the CEO of ExxonMobil–you could strip him of his entire $400M pension deal and use it to buy every man woman and child in the USA…less than two quarts of gasoline. Envy is a natural human emotion, but we have less reason to be consumed by it here than in any other country in the history of the world. If you want your millions, you can create a way to make them. Or you can rail about those who have.</p>
<p>Yeah - I left the “Bush is the worst president” theme a while back. I freely admit it - I’m officially “off-topic.”</p>
<p>Trust me, driver, I’m not motivated by envy. (I actually don’t envy the extremely wealthy, for a variety of personal reasons.) My concerns are less personal and more future-oriented: Societies which stratify into greater distance between the haves and have-nots tend to be unstable. Also, it is becoming harder to achieve the kind of “own bootstraps” success you refer to now than it was in years past - a decrease in mobilty between economic strata has also been documented. </p>
<p>My concern is the America this bodes for our children’s generation. Simple as that. And I don’t like the way it’s shaping up. I’d settle for the income distribution and tax structure we had under JFK in a flash. I’m not so happy about what’s shaping up now.</p>
<p>Care to point out a few example where income distribution has worked? The amazing thing is, people still treat income as if it were a national collective product.</p>
<p>What were the 7 deadly sins? Hmmm, which ones does the exxon ceo exude…</p>
<p>To say this man earned that much money is absurd, that money could build many schools, higher many teachers, take care of veterans that live on the street</p>
<p>Envy…no…you are projecting your feelings on to us</p>
<p>w1ked - you’re just not paying attention. What I’m saying is that what we’ve had for the past 25 years is “income [re]distribution.” It’s just that when the “redistribution” is from the poor and middle class to the wealthy nobody seems to object. The money hasn’t flown from the middle to the top by accident; it’s just that without somebody being paid to scream in the ears of people like you about it you don’t notice it happening. </p>
<p>Again: This nation had a pretty consistent distribution of wealth for decades, maybe longer. Starting around 1980, the income in this country started to get redistributed in a manner which made the rich richer relative to everyone else. It didn’t “just happen”; it was the result of a number of seemingly independent actions taken by seemingly unrelated people and institutions in our society, all greased by a steady diet of slick rationales and justifications fronted by skillful PR. I don’t want to change the distribution of income in society from the way it was in the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s - I want to restore it to that balance, by undoing some of the things that were done to skew the nation’s economy in favor of the very wealthy.</p>
<p>The “official poverty line” is almost universally recognized as bogus, failing to reflect financial realities regarding the actual cost of living.</p>
<p>The “poverty line,” official or otherwise, doesn’t really enter into this debate at all. The question: Is it the government’s business to determine what individuals should earn for their labors? Simple. I say no. You say you want the politicians to decide. No contest.</p>
<p>Not even close, driver - what I’m saying is simple but I guess it’s just over your head. Politicians - including congress, state and local officials, judges, administrators, etc., have always had a big impact on what individuals earn. That hasn’t changed, and I’n not saying it should change. What you’re oblivious to is that that power has been used to distort historical wealth distribution in recent decades in a certain directon. I’d like to see that reversed, by the same methods which were used to create that redistribution of wealth in the first place. If you want to stick your head in the sand and claim that things “just happen” I can’t make you open your eyes.</p>
<p>Open my eyes, please. Explain how reverting to confiscatory tax rates for “the rich” would assist “the poor” and “the middle class.” </p>
<p>
A really troubling statement. It shows you are wedded to the myth that the U.S. economy is some sort of collectively-owned resource–to which the government allows access–rather than what it actually is: a fantastic, eclectic bazaar filled with the accomplishments of individuals whose self-interested actions eclipse the grand designs of the statists.</p>
<p>Much of the economy <em>is</em> a collectively owned resource. Let’s start with natural resources-- air and water-- for example. Are you againt rules that penalize polluters or force them to clean up? That is certainly one way redistributing their money for a collective goal.</p>
No, of course not–nor is anyone I know. People can disagree honorably as to acceptable levels of pollution, just as they discuss how many rodent hairs are acceptable in a box of cereal. That’s a red herring in this discussion, SB, which has been about using the tax code to further income egalitarianism.</p>
<p>I am scratching my head about the desire to go back in time as if everything was great back in the 50’s and 60’s but, because of a skewing of income we have devolved into a much worse economic environment than 40 years ago. </p>
<p>Frankly, I don’t care if some people have fabulous wealth. What I observed is that the economic tide has lifted most boats and that if you asked people (even at the bottom end of the scale) if they would like to go back to the economic climate of the 50’s or 60’s, they would say no way! My family was solidly mid- to upper middle class. Yet, we were one of the few families at the time who had a (gasp) second car!! The fact that it was so rusted out that you could see the pavement through the floorboard was irrelevant. Compare that to the norm for material well-being today and no one in his right mind would want to revert to that.</p>
<p>Nope, not saying that either, driver, although SBMom has a point. What I’m saying is that countless seemingly insignificant decisions add up to a gradual change in who ends up with more money at the end of the decade. Take, for instance, anti-trust enforcement. If you cut back on that, a net result will be that the rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer, because more anti-competitive business situations will occur, allowing businesses to charge more to consumers than they would in a truly competitive capatalist economy (and businesses tend to be owned by more affluent people.) But heck - who follows antitrust agency funding? Courts enforcing unfair provisions inserted in fine print into documents accompanying consumer transactions will tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, because those provisions will make it difficult or impossible for consumers to obtain compensation if they are cheated or injured by a businesses misconduct. Again - who makes the connection to an obscure court case involving the print on the back of a cruise line ticket and overall trends in wealth? “Deregulation” was a big catch-phrase in the 80’s - but the saving and loan scandals enriched a few at the expense of the many. Enron? Hey - I’m from California - don’t get me started. Making bankruptcy laws harsher on individuals for the benefit of creditors has the same effect.</p>
<p>Obviously I can’t list all of the things that have happened since the 70’s which have nudged wealth towards to wealthy and away from the poor and middle class. What they do have in common is a philosophy and a slick presentation, on a par with the best efforts of the tobacco industry. </p>
<p>Like I said: this stuff doesn’t just “happen”.</p>
<p>FF - if the economic tide had lifted all boats - or even “most” boats I’d be OK with that. I not only don’t have a problem with some people being wealthy, I see it as a necessary part of a healthy economy. But that “tide” hasn’t risen for the bottom 50% over the past 25 years. And the fact that the height that the tide has risen is directly proportionate to the wealth of the “boat” is what concerns me. That’s what the numbers say, regardless of the experience of any individual. (And of course each individual’s financial affairs tend to improve as they get older, which obscures the historic trends when looked at on a micro level.)</p>
<p>I never said that “everything was great” in the 50’s and 60’s - I was teasing Driver by saying I’d be happy to return to the “income distribution and tax structure” of the JFK administration because I know that she knows that the rates after Kennedy’s much touted tax cuts were far higher than today’s tax rates. You’re the one who changed that into something I didn’t actually say.</p>
<p>Not a red herring-- an illustration that collective well-being is always part of the economic equation. Just as reasonable people can disagree on how much pollution is okay to breathe, reasonable people can disagree about who should get tax rebates. </p>
<p>I make a lot of money, ~top 5%, and I am okay with paying higher taxes and providing more relief to poor people. </p>
<p>It is not straight income taxes that drive all the inequities, BTW. There are all kinds of sophisticated and legal tax-avoidance strategies that are essentially only open to the very rich.</p>
<p>ff: remember that in the 50’s and 60’s people could be desperately lower middle class on one salary. Now it takes two.</p>
<p>SB, I don’t think air and water are comparable with cash in striving for an egalitarian economic end. They’re just not. Perhaps in the 19th century, but not now. Your assumption, like Kluge’s, is that there is a finite amount of money out there, and that certain greedy people are hogging more than their fair share. And if it weren’t for the greed-heads, everyone would be living the Cleaver family life. So the government should take this ethereal “resource” (money) and redistribute it. The fact is that the money supply will expand to meet the demands of the economy, which is in turn dictated by the activity of enterprising individuals who provide for their own sustenance and that of millions of others. The opportunity is there, everyone just has to cast their net.</p>