The true extent of wealth disparity in the USA

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"The poorest 10 percent doesn't even register on the chart, while the guy representing the 1 percent requires a seperate chart of his own because his cash stack doesn't fit on there"

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM#t=134[/youtube]

That actually seems legit!

This really does not make sense to me at all because (1) I work with people who are very wealthy, not as an weird accident, but as part of a very wealthy class - doctors, lawyers, etc. (2) almost every member of my family (excluding me) has become independently wealthy through different channels, (3) I just know a lot of people who have money to throw around.

I do understand that there are many many people who are being crushed by poverty, but there are a lot who aren't too.

Is there another video that shows the true extant of tax disparity, too?

You mean one that shows how lazy billionaires pay less than hard-working secretaries?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq5zL2qq64g[/youtube]

^^^
why should the bigwigs presiding over shipping all our good factory jobs overseas be continually rewarded with paying lower tax rates than those of their employees whose jobs the bigwigs are continually eliminating?

Last edited by auntblabby on 04 Nov 2013, 12:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

And then people who we think are "wealthy" (doctors, lawyers, etc) are paupers compared to the top 0.01%, the people who are so rich they are not even on the richest people in the world list. I'm talking about the people who tell governments what to do. The people who create monies.

But back to the inequality in the US. One major problem these days is that there are way too many barriers for anyone who wishes to start their own business. The big players have skewed the marketplace in their favor, buying politicians and having laws & regulations written to favor large corporations and make things cost prohibitive for small business.

This nations former success was built on the small business. Truth is, you will never get anywhere working for someone else. What we need is a complete reform of the campaign & lobbying system. Corporations need to get the Fk! out of DC.
Of course that will never happen, anyone who makes any headway in that kind of reform will mysteriously wind up dead.

The poor should be happy to be poor.

I feel sorry for people who want wealth.

^^^
all I know, is that if I were wealthy I would be different from other wealthy types, in that I would live modestly while making my money do good works for those less fortunate. other wealthy people would not get a red cent from me, IOW no purchases of yachts and such.

The Economist did a nice article about this some months ago. The Gini coefficient for the U.S. is higher than any other OECD country except Italy and the U.K, and indeed has risen dramatically in the past generation. Yet this trend is not special to the U.S. In fact, income inequality has been rising in most nations on the planet. China has a very similar income distribution to the U.S, and what's remarkable is that there were no super-wealthy persons there in the early 1980s. The biggest rise in inequality actually came from Sweden, which saw a Gini coefficient of 16 in 1990 turn to one of 25 today.

Interestingly, income inequality between societies has been decreasing. I think this suggests a global sorting of people into a global elite, a global middle class, and a global poor. A poor man in Indonesia has more in common now with a poor man in Mexico than he does with a rich man in Indonesia.

"American exceptionalism" my foot. our poor will soon fall downwards to fully equal the poor of the rest of the world.

This is when the right starts screaming about "class envy," and suggesting that poor and ordinary Americans can become part of the 1% only if they "worked harder."

You know the issue isn't purely 'jealousy' as apologists for the status quo would have you believe.

The current wealth gap, isn't stagnant, but is growing even now. Eventually you will end up with a situation where even the 1 percent will be doomed to fall because nobody else will have any spending power to partake of their goods or services. As his wealth becomes useless, he loses his power over everyone else. The system is living on borrowed time.

Absolute nonsense.

America's success is based on the fact that, thanks to old world disease and ruthlessness, we were gifted with a VAST, depopulated continent to exploit in the 19th century...

We also benefitted from our newcomer's advantage during the second wave of the industrial revolution--unlike the UK, we did not have to retool, but simply build new, modern, industrial base.

After that, it was Henry Ford and his high wage, high efficiency production model that allowed for development of the huge American middle/consumer class.

So, in the last century, most Americans got to a VERY GOOD standard of living by working for other people.

The silly American cult of the small businessman, and belief that government is keeping people down, is want enables the greedy, shortsighted, capitalists, allowing them to ruthlessly exploit workers, off-shore jobs, and destroy the middle class.

That's why Fordism works. You must reinvest in your own market so that people can actually consume and participate in the economy.

If you simply allow at that wealth to pool at the top, the system breaks down, wealth loses it's power, and before you know it, the wealthy start losing their heads...

You sound like a communist. Sorry, the USSR failed.