Forum Post: The FACTS every wealthy conservative should (or already does) know - Income inequality in the United States From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Posted 12 years ago on Jan. 27, 2012, 11:04 p.m. EST by Underdog
(2971)
from Clermont, FL
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Income inequality in the United States of America refers to the extent to which income is distributed in an uneven manner in the US. Data from the United States Department of Commerce, CBO, and Internal Revenue Service indicate that income inequality among households has been increasing significantly since the late 1970s, after several decades of stability. Inequality between male and female workers in the US has decreased considerably since 1953 but remains relatively large.
A 2011 study by the CBO 2011 found that the top earning 1% of households gained about 275% after federal taxes and income transfers over a period between 1979 and 2007, (although this number has decreased somewhat since 2007 as a result of the Great Recession). The lower earning 80% of American households now have less than half of the share of total income in America (also after federal taxes and income transfers). As of 2006, the United States had one of the highest levels of income inequality, as measured through the Gini index, among similar developed or high income countries.
Scholars and others differ as the causes and significance of the trend, which in 2011 helped ignite the "Occupy" protest movement. While education and increased demand for skilled labor is often cited as a cause of increased inequality, especially among conservatives, many social scientists point to conservative politics and public policy as an important cause of inequality; others believe its causes are not well understood. Inequality has been described both as irrelevant in the face of economic opportunity (or social mobility) in America and as a cause of the decline in that opportunity.
According to the CBO report on Household income from 1979-2007:
Numerous researchers have concluded that, on balance, the technological changes of the past several decades— and perhaps the entire past century—increased employ- ers’ demand for workers with higher skills and more education. That increase, along with a smaller increase in the supply of workers with higher skills and more educa- tion, generated substantial gains in the relative wages of more-educated workers.
Specifically, researchers have argued that the demand for skilled workers, particularly for highly educated workers, was spurred by innovations in information and comput- ing technology in the 1990s and 2000s. Moreover, innovations in the production process—such as new technology and organizational changes—also may have increased the productivity of higher-skilled workers more than that of lower-skilled workers. For example, some researchers have hypothesized that information technology might complement highly educated workers engaged in abstract tasks while substituting for moderately edu- cated workers performing routine clerical, mechanical,and analytical tasks. Those researchers have also surmised that the demand for workers performing “low-skilled” service jobs has not been affected because many of those jobs—such as health aides, security guards, orderlies, cleaners, and servers—are not amenable to automation.13 Owing to those various changes, firms have increased their demand for highly skilled workers.
At the same time, changes in the relative supplies of higher- and lower-skilled workers have been more grad- ual. The growth in the educational attainment of the workforce has slowed, leading to slower growth in the number of higher-skilled workers compared with the number of lower-skilled workers. That change, coupled with the increasing demand for such workers, has led to the rising relative compensation observed in recent decades for skilled and educated people.
So, I guess the question that has to be asked is this.
Just how did the top1% of households gain the 275% of income? I mean just who are these people?
Are they Americans who want to screw other Americans to get what they have?
Are they Americans who worked their asses off to get where they are?
Are they Americans who manipulated the system to get where they are?
Are they Americans who don't give a shit about anyone else and continue to take from others?
Are they Americans who own companies and have "slave people" working for them?
Are they Americans who invest in the stock market and just make more money?
Or are they foreigners who want to destroy this country?
Tell me for I am confused about this issue. Everyone rants about how much the 1% have but no one identifies them. Just who in the hell are they.
I am tired of listening to this crap about the 1% it's tiime to "identify" them
I don't want to hear that they work on wall street. I don't want to hear that they are corporations.
I want you who complain about them to tell the rest of us "Just who the hell these people are".
Stop with the "generalizaitons" stop saying 1% start identifying individuals - people - names - corporations - lay it all out there for us to know - OK
The high profile names like Gates, Buffet, Waltons, get the most attention, but the actual number in the 1% are about 1.4million Americans. Please see below copy/paste from CNN Money. Obviously, I cannot list 1.4 million people by name.
"But just who are these fortunate folks at the top of the income ladder? Well, there were just under 1.4 million households that qualified for entry. They earned nearly 17% of the nation's income and paid roughly 37% of its income tax. Collectively, their adjusted gross income was $1.3 trillion. And while $343,927 was the minimum AGI to be included, on average, Top 1-percenters made $960,000."
Well then, how can "name calling" solve the problem? If we don't know who the 1% are how can a claim be made against them? It can't
But what can be done is a "change in government regulation". That can happen and the only way that will happen is at the "ballot box".
The problem is not the names and who they are. The problem is the system. Even if you removed all of the 1.4 million who comprise the 1%, under the current system, they would just be replaced with another 1.4 million in fairly short order. The people like Gates, Buffet, Walton's, and all of the other 1% are just doing their thing and using the system to their fullest advantage. They have done it perfectly legally under the current rules of capitalism. Capitalism, especially unregulated free-market capitalism as practiced in the US, is the problem. Reformation of the system, not vilification of the people who maximize it to attain vast wealth, should be the focus.
Please provide us with an example of a liberal/leftist society that equals complete (or even marginal) equality.
Alright. Don't know if this completely answers your request, but please see below copy/paste.
Study: Most Americans want wealth distribution similar to Sweden
By Daniel Tencer Saturday, September 25, 2010 19:28 EST
92 percent prefer Swedish model to US model when given a choice
Americans generally underestimate the degree of income inequality in the United States, and if given a choice, would distribute wealth in a similar way to the social democracies of Scandinavia, a new study finds.
For decades, polls have shown that a plurality of Americans — around 40 percent — consider themselves conservative, while only around 20 percent self-identify as liberals. But a new study from two noted economists casts doubt on what values lie beneath those political labels.
According to research (PDF) carried out by Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University, and flagged by Paul Kedrosky at the Infectious Greed blog, 92 percent of Americans would choose to live in a society with far less income disparity than the US, choosing Sweden’s model over that of the US.
What’s more, the study’s authors say that this applies to people of all income levels and all political leanings: The poor and the rich, Democrats and Republicans are all equally likely to choose the Swedish model.
But the study also found that respondents preferred Sweden’s model over a model of perfect income equality for everyone, “suggesting that Americans prefer some inequality to perfect equality, but not to the degree currently present in the United States,” the authors state.
Recent analyses have shown that income inequality in the US has grown steadily for the past three decades and reached its highest level on record, exceeding even the large disparities seen in the 1920s, before the Great Depression. Norton and Ariely estimate that the one percent wealthiest Americans hold nearly 50 percent of the country’s wealth, while the richest 20 percent hold 84 percent of the wealth.
But in their study, the authors found Americans generally underestimate the income disparity. When asked to estimate, respondents on average estimated that the top 20 percent have 59 percent of the wealth (as opposed to the real number, 84 percent). And when asked to choose how much the top 20 percent should have, on average respondents said 32 percent — a number similar to the wealth distribution seen in Sweden.
“What is most striking” about the results, argue the authors, is that they show “more consensus than disagreement among … different demographic groups. All groups – even the wealthiest respondents – desired a more equal distribution of wealth than what they estimated the current United States level to be, while all groups also desired some inequality – even the poorest respondents.”
The authors suggest the reason that American voters have not made more of an issue of the growing income gap is that they may simply not be aware of it. “Second, just as people have erroneous beliefs about the actual level of wealth inequality, they may also hold overly optimistic beliefs about opportunities for social mobility in the United States, beliefs which in turn may drive support for unequal distributions of wealth,” they write.
The authors also note that, though there may be widespread agreement about income inequality, there is no agreement on what caused it or what should be done about it.
“Americans exhibit a general disconnect between their attitudes towards economic inequality and their self-interest and public policy preferences, suggesting that even given increased awareness of the gap between ideal and actual wealth distributions, Americans may remain unlikely to advocate for policies that would narrow this gap,” the authors argue.
Show me a capitalist society that lives up to said standard. You first.
I can't. What has that to do with my original question?
You're equating systems and humans. When systems are conceived and executed by humans, they are subject to the imperfections of humans. Your question had a false pretense.
No it doesn't have a false pretense. Systems conceived and executed by humans are all we have in our 7000 year history of so called civilisations. Yout post is so ignorant I'm thinking you are a dullard.
The universe has many systems. Just because humans retard them doesn't indicate a flaw with systems themselves.
That means nothing and you know it.
And here is a interesting history lesson about how the Swedes and Norwegians transformed their societies.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/for-those-of-the-99-truly-serious-about-non-violen/