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Jerry_Miah
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Yes, the rich who have rigged the system to benefit themselves in every way as the poor got poorer and the middle class shrank, yes they have to take responsibility for their actions.
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ComputerGeek25
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Sometimes people make choices that make them poor - as Lisa eloquently points out.
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Jerry_Miah
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Yes and sometimes it snows in Las Vegas. So? The vast majority of rich in this country were born that way and for the last 30 years they have rec’d ever-increasing benefits and tax breaks while the economic disparity has just gotten worse and worse. It’s not working.
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mary_bobo
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Statistics show that less than 20% of the rich inherited their money. The rest made it by the sweat of their own brow.
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SamH
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You mean the poor that got tax refunds when they didn’t even pay taxes?
Sounds like the rich really screwed up.
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ComputerGeek25
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You couldn’t be more wrong about the facts. It is a well known fact that 80% of millionaires have earned that money one way or another.
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ComputerGeek25
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You have it all wrong Sam.
The USA is a third world bananna republic and millions are dying in the streets of startvation.
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Jerry_Miah
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“Sweat of their own brow”, heh. Could you please tell us where you got this factoid? I’ve been trying to get my head around the logical absurdities that would come from it. 20% of the rich in what time period? Every year? Every ten years? Let’s be really fair and say every generation. That would mean that every generation the rich is comprised of 80% nouveau riche. What happened to all the former rich? Did they all lose a whole bunch of money? Or is the new 80% of the rich just adding on to the number, which would mean the population of rich people also increases 80% every generation. That doesn’t sound right either. This factoid floats in space unless you can provide some context, source etc.
I will say that it’s pretty hard to find good, clear info on the subject. Here is the best I could do so far:
That would mean 70% of the rich are born rich, at least from this sample
faireconomy.org/press_room/1997/born_on_third_base_sources_of_wealth_of_1997_forbes_400
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LisaA
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Where this falls down is that the term “rich” means differen things often depending on who’s ox is being gored. The small cadre of super rich, some of whom did inherit their money, is not what is usually meant when the Left wants to impose more taxes on someone else. “Rich” has been more recently defined by them as someone making over $250K a year and as Mary said the vast majority of them are small business people who did make their money.
The fallacy in the soundbite “Tax the Rich!” is that we do NOT tax wealth in this country, we tax earnings. So Mrs Gotrocks, heir to the catsup fortune can struture her investments to have a very low tax rate while Mr Businssman working 12 hours a day to keep his doors open is stuck with 40 to 50% once you add in state, city, and local income taxes. Is that fair? I don’t think so.
Since you are demanding facts and figures, why don’t you provide your version of what it means to be rich. Are you talking assets or income? If the former, how do you suggest we exctract their ill gotten gains? And your point would be? Do you think you have the right to take someone else’s money? I thought that was stealing (unless you’re Uncle Sam)
Someone brought up envy as the sin that seems to be making a strong comeback. It’s not a pretty sight.
Lisa
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stinkcat_14
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But then again life isn’t fair, which makes your point irrelevant. Mr. Businessman just has to suck it up and quit whining.
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LisaA
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Actually if you have been following the thread, Mr Businessman isn’t whining, it’s various posters whining and proposing they have a right to re-distribute his money. It’s funny how all the wailing and gnashing of teeth is aimed at business owners unless it’s a cool business like Apple. Then profits are OK because Steve Jobs was cool. Oil isn’t cool so their profits are evil. Anyone working in Wall Street is a parasite who doesn’t earn their money but no one is complaining about Lady Gaga or Oprah or LeBron who do something even more pointless than a hedge fund operator.
You’re right, my mama was right, life isn’t fair.
Lisa
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Mickey_Finn
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:yawn:
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Mickey_Finn
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Congratulations Lisa. Your now the Apologist to the wealthy. It all depends on what the word rich means?
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ishii
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Congratulations Lisa. Your now the Apologist to the wealthy. It all depends on what the word rich means?
Congratulations, Mickey - you’ve now proven (if there was any doubt) that all you can offer as a counter to other poster’s points is lame ad hominem arguments.
Ishii
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Mickey_Finn
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Ad hominen:: 1. appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect
2: marked by or being an attack on an opponent’s character rather than by
an answer to the contentions made.
It used to be the straw man. Now we get the ad hominen. But, for the record. I was appealing to your sense of right and wrong. How you feel does not interest me in the least.ATB
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Mickey_Finn
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Persuader
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Tyranny of the elites? Are you serious? How are unions the elites? It’s the exact opposite. It’s workers coming together in order to have some power to negotiate the premises of their financial lives. To call that a tyranny is such a perversion - it’s just ridiculous. Look, have you even spoken with actual libertarians? You do know that unions are considered one of the most important organizations in libertarian society? With a weak or non-existing government, unions would become even more important in balancing the power-relation between employer and employee.
And what do you know of the Soviet Union? Unions were beaten down by the Soviet government. In contrast with western unions, which are the one’s relevant to our discussion, Soviet unions were hijacked by the government. So they are completely irrelevant to the point I was making.
Wow. Just wow. This is really bad. First of all, we were not talking about a single mom who is drug addicted, crazy and generally useless (as you seem to think is the case for working class people). So, you don’t get to add that information to the equation. Unless you want to say that it’s typical for single moms working at Walmart (and similar places) to be a bunch of drug addicts and crazies, you need to keep that to yourself. Second of all, if you do think that, you need to realize two things:
- The casual relationship between poverty and drug abuse is not straightforward. If you have problems, you are more likely to turn to drugs. Poor people have more problems than people in general, so will turn to drugs more often than people in general. That doesn’t make drugs the cause, although drug abuse could become part of a negative spiral. The difference between correlation and causation is always important to keep in mind.
- To suggest that drug abuse correlates with poverty is not the same as saying that most of the working poor are drug addicts, just that they are more likely to be. Here’s another group that is overrepresented among drug users: intelligent people. People with higher IQ’s are more likely to do drugs.
You know, there is quite a bit of research on financial decision-making. For instance, there is a concept called ego depletion. The basic idea is that when you exert willpower to accomplish a task, the next task gets harder to do because you have used up some of that willpower. Poorer people spend more willpower on making financial decisions (having to constantly evaluate whether or not they can afford x, say), depleting their willpower and depressing their ability to exert their will. So, if you want to make the point that poor people are bad at decision-making, you could say that being poor is itself a drain on willpower. But then it would help their decision-making to pay them better, wouldn’t it? (the answer is yes, and there is evidence to back it up. You could try a google search on Dean Spears, Princeton, India)
What are we talking about here? We are talking about mobility and how to distribute capital in an economy. I have made a couple of suggestions as to what can be done to improve some things. Empowering unions is one suggestion. Changing the university-system to a more meritocratic one is another. I don’t really see how any of that can be characterized in the way you’re attempting, and to suggest it doesn’t work, require you to give arguments.
Now, you mention three statistical correlations: 1) out of wedlock birth, 2) substance abuse and 3) graduating high school. Here’s a good correlation - if you have a graduate degree, you’re very unlikely to be poor. So, obviously, the solution is that everyone get’s a graduate degree. Problem solved. To spell it out: sure you should graduate high school, sure it would help to have a stable relationship before having children, and sure it helps to stay away from drugs, but what is the point of saying that? How does it translate into policy?
No, it doesn’t. I think I offered a study in this very thread (look back a couple of posts), investigating the employment effects of increasing minimum wage. It concludes that there are strong earning effects and no employment effects of minimum wage increases. So it doesn’t seem to be the case that we must simply accept what the market sets as minimum wage.
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SamH
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Instead they’ll suck it up and quit.
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Persuader
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We have been talking about possible reasons for why the US performs poorly on mobility. I have offered what I think could be contributing factors to that poor performance, and have asked you whether or not you think it would be easier for a poor person to go to college if he didn’t have to pay tuition.
Now, this is not about being serious, hardworking or whatever. Say you have two people A and B. A has rich parents, B has poor parents. A and B are identical in ability. Is it easier for A to go to college? Yes. Will it be so even if college tuition is gone? Yes. But the difference would decrease. That is the point.
There are a lot things that were different before, not only what you mention. The sort of simplicity you suggest is not helpful. What you could do is look at how wages have developed in concert with rising standards of living, and how the pricing of products have been skewed towards consumption. In any case, if we are going to improve things, we need to look realistically at what can be done. Is it realistic to think that cultural changes in the workplace (equality among the sexes etc., which is driven by the economic need for ever-increasing productivity) can be reversed? Is it even desirable? I don’t think you can answer “yes” to any of those two questions. When it comes to your other correlations, it seems to me that higher wages for the working class would improve the home-situation for poorer children (this appears plausible when considering countries with relatively high wages for the working class. They are generally countries with minimal poverty and higher graduation rates), and thus improve their chances in school.
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LisaA
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Honestly Persuader I hope some day you move into the real world and consider real world solutions instead of utopian dreams and university based theories that work better on paper than in real life.
Your response regarding the factors creating poverty is dismissive…let’ them eat cake or let them all get graduate degrees. What you’ve ignored is that I am talking about regular people and what they can do to avoid poverty. To get a graduate degree takes money, determination, a base of knowledge in a certain area, and is likely out of the hands and brains of 99% of America.
It does not, however take a rocket scientist to simply graduate from high school, avoid intoxicants and addictive substances (including cigarettes), do not get pregnant or get someone pregnant unless you are in a stable marriage. This is an achievable goal unlike your sarcastic remark.
How does this translate into policy? QUIT REWARDING BAD BEHAVIOR. Reward positive productive behavior. Teach young people about the above. Are you aware that something like 80% of inner city youth have never experienced a father in the home who gets up and goes to work every day to support his family? Do you think this might have something to do with generational poverty?
We have to break the cycle and it is possible. One organization I am aware of is called “Best Friends” a mentoring group for inner city (mostly minority) pre teens and teens. The focus is to get them thinking about a real future with a family and a job and an education. They have a very good record of seeing their “graduates” through the high school years without drug use, pregnancy and dropping out of high school. I think it would be a far better use of our tax dollars to promote positive behaviors than to simply pay for birth control, abortions, and drug treatment. Unfortunately our system is set up to do the latter. We reward bad behavior and wonder why this behavior grows instead of decreases.
As to your nasty comment about me being cruel and heartless, you don’t know a thing about me so I will consider that comment with all the thought that went into it.
I will welcome you to the real world anytime you’d like to join up.
Lisa
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