America on its way down. Is it?

[gimpy117]

The fact that the Uber rich have such amounts of money that they can donate as the amount that has been pledged is astounding.

The fact of the matter is, If america has a equitable economy, one that ensured fair wages for the poor, there would be no need to pledge so much money to the poor.

Sadly, I feel that america has left its lower and middle class behind due to spiraling greed. heres nice quote from the Wall street journal

..."As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as “the golden era of profitability.”

That was posted in 2006...and im supposing it hasn't changed.

oh and here's a nice graph:


So essentially, with wages falling...while productivity still the same and profits rising, The Companies and Uber rich have let wages stagnate or even lowered them, while taking the profits of this and putting it into their bank account.

Its becoming harder to live in this country now, the same place where in the 60's through the 70's a middle class family could have a nice car, a nice house, health care and do it on ONE INCOME. Where is that now? its gone, kaput. Sure, Back then we worked hard, But today, we still work hard...but haven't seen our wages go up at the same rate everything else has.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by gimpy117

The fact of the matter is, If america has a equitable economy, one that ensured fair wages for the poor, there would be no need to pledge so much money to the poor.

Raise the minimum wage, and prices go up to compensate. The poor remain where they are.

Take from the rich and give to the poor, and you take away the incentive to be productive. And you have to use the government to do it, which means increasing the size of the government. And government workers already make far more than the average worker, so you increase the vicious circle. That is what got us into trouble in the first place, not individuals amassing wealth.

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[gimpy117]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Raise the minimum wage, and prices go up to compensate. The poor remain where they are.

remain where they are? you mean below the poverty line?
what about the economic benefit of...Suprise!...everybody having more money to spend instead of borrowing? Again if you know what a plutonomy is then you'll also know that having most of the money in the hands of so few is bad, and that more distributed wealth means more reliable spending and a healthier economy.

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Take from the rich and give to the poor, and you take away the incentive to be productive.

or you just take away the carrot on a string.

Oh and third man, I agree that bush made it much, much worse. But it started with Reagen and was never fixed. Maybe we'll hit rock bottom and some high towers will be shaken. on a side note, I'm still miffed by all the people who defend the Uber rich to the last man when they are not Uber rich at all. Is it the dream that they can't stop hoping for? or is it just political rhetoric?

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[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by gimpy117

remain where they are? you mean below the poverty line?

Exactly. Raise the wages by government mandate and the creator of the wages has to compensate by raising prices, which means that the people at the bottom don't really gain.

what about the economic benefit of...Suprise!...everybody having more money to spend instead of borrowing?

Unless you can figure out a way to give everybody more without charging more for everything, you'll have the same situation, but with different numbers.

Again if you know what a plutonomy is then you'll also know that having most of the money in the hands of so few is bad, and that more distributed wealth means more reliable spending and a healthier economy.

And if you did a little math you would find that if we were to strip Bill Gates of his entire estate and distribute it equally, every man, woman and child in America would be a whopping two hundred dollars richer. And everyone Gates employs would now be looking for work elsewhere. But if we do the same across the board there won't be anywhere for them to look.

And how do you propose to accomplish this redistribution? The power of the government? The government already spends far more than it takes in, and it only takes in what it can force from the people who actually work for it, or what it can borrow.

I'm still miffed by all the people who defend the Uber rich to the last man when they are not Uber rich at all. Is it the dream that they can't stop hoping for? or is it just political rhetoric?

In my case it's neither. In my case it's the observation that in order to make your dream come true you need to use the government, coupled with the observation that the government is worse at it than any rich man you can cite. As far as I can see your way is far more dangerous than what we have now.

[Skybird]

@ August,

If you base your view on the group of people you are teaching at that trade school, then you are basing on a very specialised audience that neither could surprise anyone with it'S attotude and interest for trade, nor is is a representative sample of the social structure of the american society.It is a highly specialised group. Is the lecturing for free or almost free (an equivalent to German Volkshochschulen), or do the courses cost money like at university? If more like the latter, then you already would have a specialisation of that group by the fact that these are exclusively people who can afford the costs of the education (which I would expect to make a difference since education in the US and Germany gets handled very differently). Which would be illusionary for a poor family where both parents have lost their jobs recently, work in three different low wage jobs both, and find their family financially floating just above the limit at the end of the month (not to mention time).

From the Congressional Budget Office, summer this year:
http://www.cbpp.org/files/6-25-10inc.pdf

A bit older, Spring 2007, from before the economy crisis, but a competent piece on the problematic trends in low wage jobs. reminds me of Germany, where we see a massive annihilation of jobs that get reduced with low wage jobs that in parts even must be payed for by public taxes (with the profit staying in private hands, of course)
http://se1.isn.ch/serviceengine/File...owwagework.pdf

Over 40 million jobs in the United States—about one in three—pay low wages. Unlike
good jobs, most low-wage jobs do not offer employment benefits such as health insurance
or retirement accounts, tend to have inflexible or unpredictable scheduling requirements,
and provide little opportunity for career advancement. Globalization, automation,
outsourcing, and other economic forces have all contributed to a changing domestic labor
market. All too often low-wage jobs are replacing jobs that have traditionally supported a broad
middle class. While there is considerable public concern about the erosion of the middle class,
national policy-makers have done little in the last decade to improve the pay and conditions of
low-wage work.

(Identifying CEPR in it's own words: http://www.cepr.net/index.php/about-us/)

I perfectly understand how the american model was supposed to work. But the important question is if the ideology adequately decribes the reality, and this I always have put in doubt: I see a huge contrast between the historic claim how america wants to be, and how it really is. the social polarisations seem to massively increases as well, since somewhere in the 70s. The scissor between rich and poor is widening rapidly, also few and fewer people at the top become ever richer, while more and more people work more and more, but have shrinking living conditions and payments. In principle we have the same trend in Germany and throughout Europe. As I see it, massively living on tick and making debts, while not having savings, was in parts just a logical conseqeunce, becaseu for many it would not have worked otherwise anyway. And even the economy crisis was adressed by US poltiics by the same old way: making even more debts (and demanding others to do so as well).

It is a vicious circle. Companies replace jobs (with full wages and by that producing cunsom and taxes) with low wage jobs (producing drastically reduced consum and taxes - if any at all). The profit from saving wages is either kept private, or gets invested to increase the economic activity of the company on basis of low wage jobs - low wage jobs thus become a necessary precondition for creating "jobs" and economic growth. Then a structure is established where low wage jobs cannot be tackled without costing jobs and damaging the economy that has made itself depending on low wage jobs. However, where the state needs to compensate for that lack of money that low wage workers need in order to make it through the month, these payments are made by the public budget - taxes that is. In other words, low wage jobs shift things so that any gains are kept private, but any additional costs for it are made a public issue. In other words the tax payer directly finances by indirect subventions the increase in money gained by the company.

what's more, more and more workers turning into low wage workers means the state's basis for getting a tax income gets eroded. Less and less money is available to compansate for the social costs of lowe wage jobs, and indirectly financing companies switching to low wage jobs. And this is where things are heading for a heads-to-head collision. Politicians, eager to secure their election interests before anything else, have one big answer to that: increase public debts, spending on tick.

At the same time the industry becomes more and more dependant on the few and fewer rich ones to buy and to consumme. Becasue the more low wage workers oyu hve, the smaller is your populations inancial capacity to consume and by that boosting the economy. In Germany we see this trend very drastically unfolding, hacking away at our socialmiddle class: families with children. At the same time, for different reasons, the number of single parents with kids but without a partner, is drastically climbing - which in most cases feeds back on the costs for the social security network payed by taxes that are payed by less and less tax-payers: becasue more and more people work in low wage jobs and few and fewer people have children (=future tax payers).

It is social dynamite both in Europe AND America, I think. I leave out gunnar Heihnsohn's considerations on social structure of birth rates that I have linked to two or threemon ths ago. In brief it was about the huge problme of ever mnore spoical low class babies being born, but ever fewer high class or academics' babies getting born, which again has an impact on future tax incomes and costs for social networks.

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[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

@ August,

If you base your view on the group of people you are teaching at that trade school, then you are basing on a very specialised audience that neither could surprise anyone with it'S attotude and interest for trade, nor is is a representative sample of the social structure of the american society.It is a highly specialised group.

So you're claiming that an interest in improving ones situation is not representative of the social structure of American society? If so you don't know us very well.

Is the lecturing for free or almost free (an equivalent to German Volkshochschulen), or do the courses cost money like at university? If more like the latter, then you already would have a specialisation of that group by the fact that these are exclusively people who can afford the costs of the education (which I would expect to make a difference since education in the US and Germany gets handled very differently). Which would be illusionary for a poor family where both parents have lost their jobs recently, work in three different low wage jobs both, and find their family financially floating just above the limit at the end of the month (not to mention time).

The tuition of well over half my students is paid via several worker retraining programs, so they pay little or nothing. The rest are there on student loans which are granted based on a persons future earnings potential rather than their present wealth. Call it illusionary if you want but if so it's an illusion that is personified in thousands of vocational schools like mine spread across the country.

I perfectly understand how the american model was supposed to work. But the important question is if the ideology adequately decribes the reality, and this I always have put in doubt: I see a huge contrast between the historic claim how america wants to be, and how it really is. the social polarisations seem to massively increases as well, since somewhere in the 70s.

That's because you get your information from rags like Speigel and the NYT who make their livings on spreading gloom and doom, or you read the crap the political parties are always slinging at each other and think that it is gospel. Like I've said twice so far. Folks have been prognosticating our imminent doom for over 200 years. They ain't been right yet.

And on that note let me end this with a few appropriate words from the immortal American Bard Charles Daniels, Esq.:

Well the eagles been flying slow,
and the flag's been flying low,
and a lotta people say that America's fixing to fall.
But speaking just for me,
and some people from Tennessee,
we got a thing or two to tell ya all.
This lady may have stumbled,
but she ain't ever fell.
And if our enemies don't believe that,
they can all go straight to hell.

[gimpy117]

Okay im gonna say this:

The poor make more: its will damn well gonna get spent. EVERYBODY will be happier. The economy also moves from increased spending

The rich make more: It sits in their bank account and they get to brag about how much money they make.

what do you want more? People spending, or money accruing interest in some moneybags account?

[Ducimus]

Personally, I think the article makes a damn good point. Some of what it was about I see at my work.

You know what pisses me off?

Combine all of this together:

- I haven't seen a raise in 5 years.

- I haven't seen ANY bonus in the same amount of time.

- We get this new fat cat CEO in our company, who kills our 401K matching because "nobody else is doing 401K matching in this economy". Which is bullschit, espeically considering the company has been making it's sales figures.

- Instead we get these stock options with a wishy washy letter saying, "if , when, maybe, and someday". Did i mention this is a private corporation?

- Our expenses have been climbing, because of our new CEO's travel expenses from what i hear. Apparently this guy likes to fly around and meet with "investors" . Gee, i wonder where our bonuses are going.

- I'm not sure I want to know how much this guy's making, or what bonuses HE's making, AT OUR EXPENSE!

- This same fat cat, has positioned himself with his own private.... everything. Eviciting the current occupents of some office areas and turning it into his own private thrown room.

- Rumor's persist that my job will be OUTSOURCED by, at, or sometime around the end of the year. All im sure, in an effort to lower expenses, so the CEO can keep his current pay level.


Executives.. It's a dirty word. A word of a money grubbing scumbag that is lower in character then an ambulance chasing lawyer. They'd sell the entire country down the river and off to china if it meant lining their pockets.

So of other American's are encountering stuff like this? I think the article makes a VERY good point.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by August

So you're claiming that an interest in improving ones situation is not representative of the social structure of American society? If so you don't know us very well.

That is not what I said. Wh you think I did, escapes my understanding.

The tuition of well over half my students is paid via several worker retraining programs, so they pay little or nothing. The rest are there on student loans which are granted based on a persons future earnings potential rather than their present wealth. Call it illusionary if you want but if so it's an illusion that is personified in thousands of vocational schools like mine spread across the country.

Ah, worker retraining programs we have en masse in Germany, to, arranged by the socalled Job-Centres, the former state-run employment offices. Our statistics show us that many graduates get channeled thorugh such prgams in order to count them out oif the official unemployment statistics, while the majority of them do not get jobs after such training programs even if they get send to two or even three such programs in line. that is not because the programs leave them too incompent, but because jobs do not get created by these courses and thus they still have the problem of not finding work.

I want to call it nothing (your illusory-remark), I do not know why you so often must think that I have meant or said things that I did not say and have not meant. It does not make it easier to communicate with you.

That's because you get your information from rags like Speigel and the NYT who make their livings on spreading gloom and doom, or you read the crap the political parties are always slinging at each other and think that it is gospel.

Aha. I stand corrected.

Like I've said twice so far. Folks have been prognosticating our imminent doom for over 200 years. They ain't been right yet.

Somehow I think you always take it personal and emotional immediately when somebody - not necessarily me only - asking something that puts the wanted picture into question. The statisticsI linked in my last time - ignored. the arguments they hold - cleaned of the table. An essay from an outside observer that hints and points at things - just wishing bad to the US.

Well, at least this behavior pattern also could be taken as an answer to my orignal question at the very beginning - although it is none based on argument and counter-argument.

Have you ever taken into account the possibility that the dog you think wants to bite you and that you chase away by throwing stones, in fact does not mean to bite and maybe is just approaching you for - curiosity?

Well, i leave it to this.