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Statistics show rising income inequality in the United States. But, contrary to the impression created by the Occupy protests, and media coverage thereof, statistics also show that Americans worry less about inequality than they used to. Washington Post:

In a Dec. 16 Gallup poll, 52 percent of Americans called the rich-poor gap “an acceptable part of our economic system.” Only 45 percent said it “needs to be fixed.” This is the precise opposite of what Gallup found in 1998, the last time it asked the question, when 52 percent wanted to “fix” inequality.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-simplistic-view-of-income-inequality/2011/12/19/gIQAeVmR5O_story.html?hpid=z4

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[-] 0 points by ronjj (-241) 13 years ago

We fixed the inequality issue very well over the past 30 years and there is no longer an issue in most peoples' mind.

This is how we did it:

We set an anchor that cannot be moved. This is the growing anchor called the "poor", sometimes called the welfare class, the non-tax generating class, etc. We set this anchor in concrete so that it cannot be moved. The people at the very bottom simply cannot go any lower. We set our goal as one of growth in numbers within this class and have done a great job of it. Since it has grown so large and includes so many income levels within that group alone, it is very seldom that any individual ever works their way up enough to truly escape for this group.

I probably do not have to go into any discussions about how this group was set and who set and supports its growth today.

Once this was perfected, the entire issue became one of an internal issue of who was richer within this group and who was poorer. Yet there was insufficient movement within this group for any significant number to escape from the group and at that point it became a matter of growth. If growth was not fast enough we simply raised the top of the group up a few dollars and thus gained more people into the group.

In the meantime the top of the gap did not have to operate under these same controls and it simply moved up and almost out of sight. It is so far out of sight today that very few can even identify more that a few of the ones at the very top (Bill Gates comes to mind). This group has received their identify from the rest of the groups and it has been very restricted in its size. Most people would identify it as the 1% because to identify it as the 2% or the 10% or the 25% or even 50% would simply let too many middle group members into the elite group thus cutting into what was left of the original middle group which is required to feed the growth of the poor group.

Because of political reasons, the growth of this group is also restricted. In other words, the only way to move into the group is to become VERY VERY wealthy. There is no allowance for the bottom of this group to move downwards as is allowed for the bottom group to moved upwards. Thus the group is seen and actually is very elite in its membership. Middle class members who would move into this select group are view as somehow immoral since the only means of movement into the group are identified as inherited wealth, illegal actions, violations of moral and ethics and all of this is determined not from within that group, but from without.

In the meantime we have the middle class and rather than give them the opportunity to move into the top group, we simply keep moving the standards up and thus they cannot move into the group and for the most part become an easy target if somehow they do. This group is fully protected by both the poor and the very rich and the poor feeds off the group easily accepting membership without any qualification other than a brand that says "poor". Politics, and equalization of the wealth groups work very hard to keep this group in a growth pattern. With the economy of the country today, this becomes even more difficult to maintain as members of this group readily fall back into or are reclassified into the poor group with little chance of returning to their middle class lifestyle. Thus we see the great efforts being put forth to grow this class before it feeds totally into the poor class because it is blocked from going the other direction. These efforts are directed mainly towards the top class which is seen as an easy unnamed target with unlimited resources. In the meantime, this group is always lumped into the other 99% including not only themselves but the poor group as well making them an even easier target for the vultures with every attempt politically to pull them down into one group of the poor.

The goal is to pit this group, identified as the 99% against the 1% with the supposed intent of getting rid of the 1% or a lease bringing them down into the 99% with everyone else. Once this mission is accomplished, the entire cycle begins again with the selection of a new 1% because they no longer can belong in the middle group. The faster this cycle spins the more rapidly we reach a true state of socialism and equality of not only wealth but also of poverty itself.

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[-] 1 points by aries (463) from Nutley, NJ 13 years ago

tower of babble

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[-] 0 points by ronjj (-241) 13 years ago

Let me see, that was when there was this time when the languages became confused and people lost their understanding on what others were speaking - right?? Welcome to the real Towel, aries, is there something about what I said that you can't now understand??.

I would pay to see 50 of the posters on these forums in a kiva somewhere with only one way out and a limit of one to be let out. The judgements would be unbelievable. 49 would be absolutely RIGHT and one would get out what a truely unique group of people.

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