War of the future: gap between rich and poor growing

[Digital_Trucker]

Originally Posted by August

I said "around that amount" because it varies depending on where you are in the country. All their wages however are within a buck or two of federally mandated minimum wage.

And yes if prices are based on illegal below minimum wage pay then yes that is a compromise that should be met. To argue otherwise is to favor slavery, pure and simple.

My bad for not getting the around that amount definition. You'll have to pardon me for not being very good at interpreting the language (as evidenced by my wife's continual fascination with my inability to "read between the lines" )

Definitely agree with you regarding how things should be in a perfect world. If the cost of an item is based on the below standard wages of the producer, then we should be willing to pay more in order for the working person to make a decent wage. However, if we take that stand, then we shouldn't be buying anything at Wally-World, anyway, since the prices of many of their products are based on the below standard wages of people overseas making those products, so the people at Wally-World would be out of work, too.

My apologies for getting off of the original subject, which is the widening gap between the "haves" and the "have nots". We could discuss the reasons for that 24/7 for years and not come to a solution. There are thousands of reasons why some have and some don't with the "fault" lying on both sides, the solution is equally difficult to quantify.

[Digital_Trucker]

Originally Posted by SteamWake

why some people take delight in such matters is beyond me

Who is taking delight in these matters?

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by Digital_Trucker

Who is taking delight in these matters?

I cant say without the forum police getting on me for 'personal' attacks but suffice it to say the usual suspects.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by goldorak

Economic data over the last 20 years refutes your opinion.

Care to prove that?

Let me help you - Apples and oranges man. The point the economic data forgets is that there would be an increased amount of productivity if everyone bothered to work up to their capability and follow historical ways to get where they needed to be. Your economic data simply points to what happened and has no bearing on what could be.

-S

[Blacklight]

I don't think this is a gap between who makes what. It is a actually a growing gap between those that sit on their ass and those that actually get up every morning and go to work.

It's an ignorant statement like this that pisses me off. I usually ignore your posts, but a statement like this irritates me !

I can speak from example ! I am a hard worker. I bust my a$$ for whoever I work for. Then, the job market got a little tough. Did the higer-ups feel it ? No ! They just moved jobs and their money overseas and laid everyone off. I have been laid off in this manner twice in my life only to end up being forced to take tougher jobs for less pay and less benefits if any benefits at all and those benefits are constantly draining due to companies trimming their fat and the CEO's giving themselves raises ! As a matter of fact, a LOT of these company CEO's are making their bonuses by making their company apear to be making profit BY laying people off !
There are a lot of us hard workers out there who actually DO go to work and work our asses off thank you very much ! Whether you like it or not, the divide between the wealthy and the poor (The middle class is dropping into the poor class as we speak) IS increasing in levels never before seen ! As companies ditch the US and move overseas and take their money with them, or keep the money in their own little circles, and pay us less for working for them, our cost of living is going up, up, up. 5% of the people in the US control 90% of it's wealth ! Think about that before you call us hard workers who are getting the shaft from the higher ups people who sit on their asses and don't work.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Maybe this article should be titled - The wake up of Western people to the idea that they are not all that!

Ha ha, that was spot on.

Originally Posted by Morts

holy crap i agree with..you

Well Denmark has loads of dosh to throw around, and you're not about to go poor as a nation any time soon. My country, Finland, seems to have more endemic problems of large parts of the nation being pretty devoid of opportunities. It's easy to say "go where the work is" but that may include going abroad into some unknown situation which isn't very nice especially for a long period of time. I've been in that situation and probably will be again, and I don't think people who are poor, destitute and/or unemployed are so because of their own fault. Especially when they have like two degrees and plenty of work experience.

Inherited wealth means that the society will never be equal, at least in our lifetimes. Imagine that, we're still pretty much living in a caste society in the west and the ones at the bottom are being increasingly targeted by the society and the various right wing forces. Time is right for a new Hitler...

[Happy Times]

Originally Posted by OneToughHerring

Well Denmark has loads of dosh to throw around, and you're not about to go poor as a nation any time soon. My country, Finland, seems to have more endemic problems of large parts of the nation being pretty devoid of opportunities. It's easy to say "go where the work is" but that may include going abroad into some unknown situation which isn't very nice especially for a long period of time. I've been in that situation and probably will be again, and I don't think people who are poor, destitute and/or unemployed are so because of their own fault. Especially when they have like two degrees and plenty of work experience.

Inherited wealth means that the society will never be equal, at least in our lifetimes. Imagine that, we're still pretty much living in a caste society in the west and the ones at the bottom are being increasingly targeted by the society and the various right wing forces. Time is right for a new Hitler...

Bohoo fecking woo!
So you are still unemploeyd, or between jobs as you put it before? No work for your degrees? What are those degrees? Maybe there is something else that is stopping you from getting a job? Why dont you take a job other than your dream job? Maybe you should study something else?

Most unemployed i know are lazy, alcholics, mad or all at the same time.

Devoid of oportunities? Please!
You can go to any school you like here, no matter your sosio-economic background, even i support that..
You need more opportunities? What?

Inherited wealth is a bad thing? Its one reason people work hard, save and invest, to have something to pass on in the family. One of the most immoral taxes is the inheritance tax, hope this goverment manages to abolish it.
We are never going to be equal.. Would you really want to be equal with a lazy, drunk mad person?
Its enough there is education and health care provided for all, rest should be up to the individual.
Otherwise people become passive and start to whine how they cant be and get everything what they want..
Thats life! Who said its going to be easy?

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Mikhayl

Lots of companies mistake the "minimal legal wage" for "normal wage". I once had a somewhat qualified job with a good amount of stress, and I had the same salary as the guys wiping the floor, who had no responsibilities whatsoever and overall a lot easier life than me and my colleagues, no overtime (unpaid) and so on.

Spot on. so far the threadhas only been running about finding foul excuses why one must not adress the issue, and that the poor are poor because they deserve it. that the middle class is breaking away and the new poor are being formed by former middle class with parents being in labour, is comfortably ignored. It is eaier to declare every poor guy a lazy parasite and alcoholic. Well, such people do exist, too. But they do not form the bone of this new develoepment, nor are they a majority. they were and are a minority group. the overwhelming majority of ordinary citizens losing jobs try hard to find new work, and accept even unacceptable working cinditons and slavery wages just to work again, may it be of reasons for self-rerspect, may it be because they do not know what to do when staying at home.

There are dirty jobs, and stressing jobs, yes. and local natives should be willing to do these themselves, yes. But they should get a fair payment for that, then. the type of job may be hard to accept, but often can be accepted - but the wages to be earned there often is what turns it into unacceptable jobs. And if you defend economic policies that lead to the state paying social aid to an "employee" so that he can at least survive on the most minimum of living levels (so-called Hartz-IV-receivers get around 330 euros in total - from that they have to pay everything), becasue a company were he works pays him 1 euro per hour (a reality here in Germany), at the same time the person not being allowed to earn more than i think 150 euros additionally - then this ic cyncism at its very best and highest. If that person earns more than that limit, Hartz-IV is cancelled, and then he is stranded in a job were he has to make his income for a living from a job that pays him 1 euro per hour (which is an offemnse in itself). Now do some calculations, and then understand why people do not work that way. It is the only logical choice to do. the month does not have enough hours to earn you a living.

More and more people can no longer live from their hand's work. THAT IS THE PROBLEM. In Germany, Hartz-IV was imlemented to get away from the high spendings in the social sector. It also was meant to motivate people by small rewards and high pressure to accept jobs they did not accept before. However, comaonies are shown in statistics not to turn 1-Euro-Jobs into regular jobs after a time of testing the new guy. Instead they take proftiable benefit of the opportunity, destroy regular jobs, and turn them into 1-euro-Jobs, by that destablizing both the social and the economic system. we have seen the same effect ten or twelve years earlier, when so-called mini-jobs ("student's jobs") lost certain tax priviliges and had to pay a tax flat rate, in return companies were allowed to turn regular jobs into these new mini-jobs. It all was meant to give social insurance security (hehe, very small ones...) to poeple who before worked in such jobs, and had no security at all. but in fact it turned into the intended killing of hundreds of thosuands of jobs, that then were turned ionto these mini-jobs with lower wages for employees, and greater tax xavings for the company. Before this transition, we had around 100-150 thousand such jobs in Germany. now we have over 800 thousand. that is a loss from tax income for the state. That is a loss of social stability and future secureity for employees, that is the destruction of hundreds of thoisuands of jobs that before were "normal" jobs". Whole branches now had chnaged and now depend on these sickening, unhelathy conditions to be the norm - these branches have chnaged in that wy that economically they cannot survive, thexy say, if their jobs would be turned into jobs that give people an exiostence again. Isn't that crazy, inhumane and deeply unhealthy for the social stability of a state?

the reason why policy allows this to happen, is easy. The victims of this new job landscape - do no longer appear in unemployment statistics. That's all.

Note, that the article and the study speaks of three in four nations of the world. This is not about germany and the US alone, these two are just ion the small group of nations were such detoriations have turned worse faster than in most other nations. If the gap between rich and poor is woiedning in 3 of four nations, then aroun 150 nations are affected - much more than just the wetsern and Asian industrial nations. we talk of third worl nations, and the poorest and the poor. Slave labours and landowners. The rich elite of a banana republic that cooperates with the foreign industrial corporation while the national population lives in the dirt or is supressed by tyranny.

This is also what the study is about. so please, guys: stop being so ignorrant like many of you have displayed to be in your postings here. You ashame yourself with this kind of social-darwinistic cynism. If your outcry about the criminal elitists at Wall street and in the bank's top floors would be as loud as your condemning of the poor, and if you would brankmark the failed new economy theory that has allowed a damage to accumulate that nullifies they costs of financing unemployed families, much coluld be acchieved. but waiting for that outcry probably is a wait in vein. Better serve the cliche of the poverty-deserving lazy poor, and declare the exception from the rule - the rule itself.

[Frame57]

Originally Posted by Blacklight

It's an ignorant statement like this that pisses me off. I usually ignore your posts, but a statement like this irritates me !

I can speak from example ! I am a hard worker. I bust my a$$ for whoever I work for. Then, the job market got a little tough. Did the higer-ups feel it ? No ! They just moved jobs and their money overseas and laid everyone off. I have been laid off in this manner twice in my life only to end up being forced to take tougher jobs for less pay and less benefits if any benefits at all and those benefits are constantly draining due to companies trimming their fat and the CEO's giving themselves raises ! As a matter of fact, a LOT of these company CEO's are making their bonuses by making their company apear to be making profit BY laying people off !
There are a lot of us hard workers out there who actually DO go to work and work our asses off thank you very much ! Whether you like it or not, the divide between the wealthy and the poor (The middle class is dropping into the poor class as we speak) IS increasing in levels never before seen ! As companies ditch the US and move overseas and take their money with them, or keep the money in their own little circles, and pay us less for working for them, our cost of living is going up, up, up. 5% of the people in the US control 90% of it's wealth ! Think about that before you call us hard workers who are getting the shaft from the higher ups people who sit on their asses and don't work.

I undertand this. I have been there. We need to give incentives for these companies to stay here. It is a huge expense to move a company, they do not just do it willy nilly. I worked for three companies that were going public and that was the first warning sign to me. They fudges their books and began to cut and slash bennies and people. To sell the company and the upper level management makes out like bandits. This should be illegal IMO. But, I had to move to remain employed. I am angry at this kind of nonsense, but you have to stay ahead of the curve so to speak. I chose Biomedical Engineering because it is recession proof and many jobs are available that people can enter with an electronics degree and some anatomy and physiology courses. New England got hit hard. The only place I would work out there would be on site in a hospital. Drager is in eastern PA, but I hear they too are thinking of moving out because it is too expensive to operate here in America.

Originally Posted by Happy Times

Bohoo fecking woo! ...

What do you mean? I said it's time for a new Hitler. Thought you of all people should be happy about that.

[frenzied]

The issue is not whether the lower classes are lazy slobs, sure some are, but many are not. The issue is how the gap between 'regular' pay and CEO-style pay has grown drastically over the past 20 or so years. A newspaper article I read about a month ago (no link sorry, it was a month ago) reported that 20 years ago, average executive pay was 20-30 times average worker pay, and that today the average executive pay is about 200-300 times what an average worker is getting paid.
Are the executives working ten times harder? Are the regular workers doing ten times less work?

[FIREWALL]

The meek shall inherit the Earth.

And the Rich will keep them all employed. :p

[StdDev]

According to THIS, it may not be so bad for some!

[FIREWALL]

Here's some heavy reading.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Halfwit-Nati...?tag=thdama-21