Redistribution of Wealth - To The Rich

http://www.alternet.org/economy/149531/ ... re_savage/
The Class War Launched by America's Wealthiest Is Getting More Savage
Countries with wide income inequality are unstable: they have large underclasses, high rates of crime and little opportunity.
January 13, 2011

In 1979 the richest 1 percent of Americans earned 9 percent of all U.S. income. Now they earn 24 percent of all U.S. income. One percent of Americans earn nearly one-fourth of all the income in the country.

From 1990 to 2005, adjusted for inflation -- the minimum wage is down 9 percent, production workers’ pay is up only over 15 years 4.3 percent.

At the same time, the rich get richer: Corporate profits are up 106.7 percent. The S&P 500 is still up 141.4 percent since 1990. CEO compensation is up 282 percent. Call it transfer of wealth. Or call it class warfare.

What’s wrong with the rich getting richer?

Slate's Timothy Noah, in "The United States of Inequality," wrote, “Income distribution in the United States [has become] more unequal than in Guyana, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and roughly on par with Uruguay, Argentina, and Ecuador.”

Take a look at that list.

Countries with wide income inequality don’t lead the world in research, technology, industry, and innovation. They’re unstable. They have large underclasses. They have high rates of crime. They have little opportunity. Countries with high levels of income inequality are third-world countries.

In such countries the rich have disproportionate power. They take control of all aspects of society, especially government, the police, and the judiciary. They become self perpetuating.

If current trends continue, “The United States by 2043 will have the same income inequality as Mexico.” (Tula Connell, Mar 12, 2010, AFL-CIO Now.) When a country is, or becomes, a third-world country, the other thing people can do is run. To some place richer and freer. Like America.

But when America becomes Mexico, where you gonna run to?

residenttroll wrote: Welcome to Obama's world.

How so?

SS109 wrote: Obama signed on to the Bush tax cuts for two more years.

And maybe the real reason we are seeing the US income levels lowering is because the rest of the world is catching up to us? If our workers and companies can't compete with the rest of the world, we are going to lose income and sales. And for the people who whine about the poor, the American poor are better off than they were in the 70's, dealing with high interest rates and high unemployment. Food costs as a percentage of income are lower than ever before.

True, Obama has done very little/almost nothing to stem the tide at all, which is why many liberals are unhappy with him - he hasn't done enough. But this trend has been happening for much longer than Obama or Bush. This article did no comparison of US wages to other countries - what's quoted is solely what has been happening here.

Do you really think the poor are better off? When more and more of them are former middle class who can't do enough to get by? When it becomes harder to get an education and get that better paying job? When jobs that don't require a higher education become more scarce because they are moving out of the country so the companies can make more profit on lower-wage foreigners? Do you think the growing number of poor people will continue to be apathetic when they see the rich getting richer without having to work any harder for it - they just have better tax breaks?

The rest of the original citation:

Here’s how regular people can deal with cultures of high inequality.
1. The primary, and best, weapon is a progressive tax structure. As people move up the income ladder they pay a higher rate at each rung.
We had a chance to slow the process by letting the last round, the Bush tax cuts, expire. We’ve lost that round.

2. People can become educated and move on up.
Today, students have to borrow. The first, and truest, lesson you learn when you go to college is how to be in service to the banks.

We’ve lost that battle.

What does it mean?

“Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who have about a 22 percent chance. (Understanding Mobility in America, April 26, 2006, Tom Hertz, American University.)

3. Working people can organize and form unions.
Businesses have become very good at beating unions. And they’re getting better at it. According to Business Week, ("How Wal-Mart Keeps Unions at Bay,” 10/28/2002),"over the past two decades, Corporate America has perfected its ability to fend off labor groups."

In the 1940s a third of private sector employees were unionized. Now it’s down to just 7.2 percent. Unions only remain strong in the public sector, where membership is 37 percent.

If you read the papers or watch the news, you will see an anti-public service union story almost everyday. These are the people who teach your kids, pick up the trash, clean the sewers, drive the buses and trains, they’re the police and fireman. The stories will tell you their pension fund liabilities will bankrupt the states; that it’s unionized teachers who have ruined our schools.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/149477/ ... doing_well
Why You Should Feel Cheated, Deceived and Sickened by America's Stunning Inequality, Even If You're Doing Well
If middle- and upper-middle-class families had the same share of the economic pie as in 1980, they'd be making an average of $12,500 more per year.
January 10, 2011

Based on Internal Revenue Service figures, if middle- and upper-middle-class families had maintained the same share of American productivity that they held in 1980, they would be making an average of $12,500 more per year.

Inequality in the U.S. doesn't get the attention it deserves. Many of us brush it off, thinking, "So the rich get richer -- it's always been that way."

The lopsided distribution of wealth in the U.S. doesn't get the blame it deserves for our budget problems, either. On the contrary, since our economic system is based on individual freedom, most of us believe in the inalienable right to make unlimited amounts of money. The thought of taking back a greater share from innovative and industrious business leaders is (shudder) "socialism."

So instead we increase sales taxes and service fees. We cut police forces and educators. We remove funding for food pantries, homeless shelters and elder assistance. (and mental health services)

That $12,500 per American family mentioned earlier translates into a trillion extra dollars of income every year for the richest 1 percent (not including their tax cuts). The very wealthy insist all of this money will stimulate the economy.

But it's well known by economists that low-income earners spend a greater percentage of their overall income on consumption, while high-income earners save more. Middle-class America has been led to believe the growth at the top will eventually produce more jobs. But many of us have college-educated sons and daughters who can't find suitable employment. Fortune magazine reported that the 500 largest U.S. companies cut a record 821,000 jobs in 2009 while their collective profits increased threefold to a record $391 billion.

The deception has persisted for 30 years. According to Forbes magazine, the top 20 private equity and hedge fund managers took an average of $657.5 million in 2006. The salaries of these 20 people could have paid for 25 police officers, 25 firefighters, and 50 teachers for every one of the 3,000 counties in the United States. Instead we see counties like Ashtabula in Ohio, which cut back its police force from 112 to 49, while a judge advises the residents to "get a gun" to defend themselves.

In their book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger (Bloomsbury Press, 2009), Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have documented the numerous studies that correlate inequality with shorter life expectancies, increased disease and health problems, and even higher murder rates. These effects are attributed to the stress of "relative deprivation" -- trying to survive in a community where economic, educational and health care disadvantages persist in an otherwise prosperous environment.

bailey bud wrote: The article prescribes a progressive tax structure to handle income inequities.

I disagree. Sending money to government simply encourages corruption and corporate panhandling.

We need to address the corruption and corporate panhandling in the federal government concurrently with addressing the non-parity of taxation.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/149396/ ... a_possible

Most Americans believe that a person should enjoy the full fruits of his or her labors, however abundant. In this light, taxation tends to be seen as an intrinsic evil. It is worth noting, however, that throughout the 1950's -- a decade for which American conservatives pretend to feel a harrowing sense of nostalgia -- the marginal tax rate for the wealthy was over 90 percent. In fact, prior to the 1980's it never dipped below 70 percent. Since 1982, however, it has come down by half. In the meantime, the average net worth of the richest 1 percent of Americans has doubled (to $18.5 million), while that of the poorest 40 percent has fallen by 63 percent (to $2,200). Thirty years ago, top U.S. executives made about 50 times the salary of their average employees. In 2007, the average worker would have had to toil for 1,100 years to earn what his CEO brought home between Christmas in Aspen and Christmas on St. Barthes.

We now live in a country in which the bottom 40 percent (120 million people) owns just 0.3 percent of the wealth.

This has been the trend, yet there are no jobs forthcoming, no improvements in our economy despite the stimulus spending. We cannot spend our way out of this mess, nor can we keep giving the advantaged additional privileges and loopholes above and beyond the average American. We were founded on the principles of equal opportunity and that has been eroded - it must stop or there will be a revolution, one based on class warfare.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/149405/ ... ing_poorer
10 Signs That Our Nation Is Becoming Poorer
The Working Poor Families Project has discovered that the number of working poor in the United States is higher than ever and it continues to increase at a staggering pace.
January 4, 2011