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Banned
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Originally Posted by filtherton
So you doubt my ability to relay my experiences?
So are the USDA and the US Forest Service and the FDA. That doesn't mean that they should be abolished, it means that they need to be purged. I realize that the fcc isn't perfect, and i'd prefer to see it retooled, but even for all its flaws, it does do a useful thing or two.
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In the 1930's...the reaction to extreme wealth concentration made sense...elect leadership that would use government as the wealthy elite had....to work for it's interests...but this time....to make government work in the interests of the people. Now we have a movement championed by the followers of Ron Paul....to make a minimalist government that ends progressive taxation and aggressive collection....allowing the wealthiest to keep what they've already taken when they controlled the government....the large portion of all existing assets....<h3>Way to go...Ron Paul supporters....way to go.....</h3>
ONE mo' TIME....THE WEALTHIEST ARE RAPING YOU OF YOUR FAIR SHARE OF THE PIE....ALL THE WAY BACK TO 1946....you have been manipulated into believing that "government doesn't work"...it works fine for Mr. Bush's wealthy patrons....their agenda of "change" is what gave them huge tax cuts and increased your US Treasury debt from $5.65 trillion in 2001 to $9 trillion, now.
<h3>Whether Ron Paul is a republican, a consitutionalist, or a libertarian is irrelevant.</h3> He is not committed to progressive taxation with high top tax rates on the highest incomes, and he is not a strong advocate for union organizing or enforcement of labor laws and OSHA, or for innovative new measures to use government to reverse the concentration of wealth in so few hands.
Ron Paul will receive few votes because he does not address the inequality of wealth distribution in the US. John Edwards does address and offer tepid solutions to the problem. The problem is at a critical stage, yet no one wants to talk about it. Will we wait until it's effects trigger the rise of a US "Hugo Chavez"....or will we advocate for a populist, pro-union, pro consumer pro middle class, political agenda?
We have the superior numbers..(why do you think the DOJ concentrated on suppressing the vote ?)..we can vote in a leadership that will act in our interests....your reaction to the following, is to vote for Ron Paul....a candidate who wants smaller government...wants to abolish tha IRS and the progressive income tax that featured a top tax rate, when Reagan took office in 1981....of 70 percent on only the highest incomes. That tax rate was "reformed", and it led to the following disparity. Ron Paul and you want even more of it....
Quote:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogsp...y-incomes.html
Falling Family Incomes
...Not only has mean real income fallen, it has fallen disproportionately on those aged 44 and under. <H3>Median income has also fallen for those aged 44 and under even though it has risen slightly across all age groups.....
....Net worth in the period 1995-1998 and 1991-2001 dramatically outpaced the rise from 2001-2004. Those in the 35-44 age group have less real net worth than the same age group did in 1998.</H3> That is negative real net worth over a 6 year period for a group of wage earners that should be nearing their peak earning years.....
The Rich Get Richer
A <A HREF="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/24/business/main1342205.shtml">CBS news article</A> on falling family incomes notes the discrepancy between the haves and the have nots.
The gap between the very wealthy and other income groups widened during the period.
The top 10 percent of households saw their net worth rise by 6.1 percent to an average of $3.11 million while the bottom 25 percent suffered a decline from a net worth in which their assets equaled their liabilities in 2001 to owing $1,400 more than their total assets in 2004.
"This is the continuing story of the rich getting richer," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York. "Clearly, the gains in wealth are going to the top end.".....
The Gini Index
Stephen Roach hit the nail on the head on March 3rd with <A HREF="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HD26Dj01.html">Globalization's New Underclass</A>.
Billed as the great equalizer between the rich and the poor, globalization has been anything but. An increasingly integrated global economy is facing the strains of widening income disparities -- within countries and across countries. This has given rise to a new and rapidly expanding underclass that is redefining the political landscape. The growing risks of protectionism are an outgrowth of this ominous trend.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Globalization has long been portrayed as the rising tide that lifts all boats. The surprise is in the tide -- a rapid surge of IT-enabled connectivity that has pushed the global labor arbitrage quickly up the value chain. Only the elite at the upper end of the occupational hierarchy have been spared the pressures of an increasingly brutal wage compression. The rich are, indeed, getting richer but the rest of the workforce is not. This spells mounting disparities in the income distribution -- for developed and developing countries, alike.
With per capita income of $38,000 and $1,700, respectively, the US and China are at opposite ends of the global income spectrum. Yet both countries have extreme disparities in the internal mix of their respective income distributions. This can be seen in their so-called Gini coefficients -- a statistical measure of the dispersion of income shares within a country. A Gini Index reading of “0” represents perfect equality, with each segment of the income distribution accounting for a proportionate share of total income. Conversely, a reading of “100” represents perfect inequality, with the bulk of a nation’s overall personal income being concentrated at the upper end of the distribution spectrum. In other words, the higher the Gini Index, the more unequal the income distribution. <H3>The latest Gini Index readings for the US (41) and China (45) are among the highest of all the major economies in the world -- pointing to a much greater incidence of inequality than in economies with more homogeneous distributions of income, such as Japan (25), Europe (32), and even India (33).
America’s Gini coefficient has been on the rise for over 35 years -- moving up from about 35 in 1970 to over 40 today. What is new is how America’s income distribution has become more unequal in a period of rapidly rising productivity growth -- a development that has been accompanied by an extraordinary bout of real wage stagnation over the past four years.</H3> Economics teaches us that in truly competitive labor markets such as America’s, workers are paid in accordance with their marginal productivity contribution. Yet that has not been the case for quite some time in the US. Over the past 16 quarters, productivity in the nonfarm US business sector has recorded a cumulative increase of 13.3% (or 3.3% per annum) -- more than double the 5.9% rise in real compensation per hour (stagnant wages plus rising fringe benefits) over the same period.
First in manufacturing, now in services, the global labor arbitrage has been unrelenting in pushing US pay rates down to international norms. But the real wage compression in the US has not been uniform across the income spectrum. In large part, that has occurred because increasingly broad segments of the American labor market are now exposed to a uniquely powerful competitive force -- the IT-enabled arbitrage. Courtesy of the hyper-speed of sharply accelerating Internet penetration, the global labor arbitrage has pushed into areas that historically have been unaccustomed to wage competition.
Unlike Treasury Secretary "Blue Skies No Snow" I see no reason for this to change. Corporate profits (and bonuses for the haves) soared with every outsourcing of jobs to India and China. Average Joe went deeper in debt while the CEOs and insiders made out like bandits on stock options. Average Joe lost his job at GM and Ford (or is about to) and will be happy to have a job at Walmart instead.
This recovery produced lots of firsts
* Negative Savings Rates
* Negative Real Wages
* Poor expansion of private sector jobs
* Rising Debt
* No Trickle Down Flows
All of the above can be attributed to an economy whose only real engine of growth was a strong housing sector fueled by low interest rates, ever lowering credit standards, cash out refis to support consumption, and rampant speculation.....
CEO Pay vs. the Average Employee
Those rising wage averages that we have seen have never been as skewed as that are today. Consider the following snip from a <A HREF="http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/spch021306rcc.htm">Speech by SEC Commissioner Roel C. Campos</A> on February 13, 2006.
In 1982, the ratio between chief executives and the average employee was 42:1. In 2004, the ratio of the average CEO pay to that of the average non-management worker in the US was 431:1. There is certainly no evidence that today's executives in the U.S. are 10 times better than twenty years ago. The US ratio far exceeds any international comparison, which remain closer to the historical average. Although internationally there has been a trend towards increased "US-style" pay, according to a 2001 report by management consultants Towers Perrin the same ratio in other heavily developed nations was 25:1 in the case of the UK, 16:1 in France, 11:1 in Germany and as low as 10:1 in Japan (as compared to 531:1 in the US in that same year).
Of course, one must recognize that some of the disparity has been due to governmental constraints such as the restriction on granting of stock options. In Japan and Korea, for example, it was not until 1997 that such restrictions were lifted. <h3>Even so, the 10:1 ratio in Japan versus the 531:1 ratio in the US in 2001 is stunning. ...</h3>
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...the last time that the wealthiest were on the verge of owning too great a portion of total US wealth....this happened:
Quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationa..._Relations_Act
....The Wagner-Connery Act — signed into law on July 5, 1935 — established a federal agency, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), with the power to investigate and decide on charges of unfair labor practices and to conduct elections in which workers would have the opportunity to decide whether they wanted to be represented by a union. The NLRB was given more extensive powers than the much weaker organization of the same name established under the National Industrial Recovery Act, which the United States Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional......
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<h3>I SHOWED YOU IN MY LAST POST, THAT BUSH STACKED THE NLRB WITH ANTI LABOR FLUNKIES, USING SENATE RECESS APPOINTMENTS. BUSH'S PATRONS KNOW GOVERNMENT IS EFFECTIVE...SO THEY SABOTAGED THE MAKEUP OF THE NLRB....</h3>
Government can function...it can provide good programs....the coming wave of mortgage foreclosures justifies the need for programs like this. Study how and why it is so successful.....duplicate it....Ron Paul and his supporters are not interested:
Quote:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/apa...ell-lama.shtml
What is Mitchell-Lama?
Created in 1955, the Mitchell-Lama program provides affordable rental and cooperative housing to moderate- and middle-income families.
There are 107 City-sponsored, moderate- and middle-income rental and limited-equity cooperative developments in New York City, which contain approximately 47,000 units. <h3>HPD supervises waiting lists</h3>, management issues, and has other oversight responsibilities for 81 Mitchell-Lama developments; an additional 26 developments have shared supervision by HPD and the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.
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If he had not been assassinated in 1935, the man with this platform was planning to run for president in 1936. Your great grandfather's era, understandably fostered the rise of sentiments like this:
Quote:
http://www.ssa.gov/history/hueyappend.html
Redistribution of Wealth
Quote:
http://www.hueylong.com/programs/share-our-wealth.php
In a national radio address in February 1934, Huey Long unveiled a plan called “Share Our Wealth”, a program designed to provide a decent standard of living to all Americans by spreading the nation’s wealth among the people....
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Congress provided that as a matter of national policy necessary for the preservation of the nation and its defense against foreign foes that the United States declare it against public policy for any family to have less than the comforts of home and of life, free of debt, and equal to at least the value of one-third the average American family wealth; that in order to guarantee such comforts and necessities of life to all the people, it was necessary that some reasonable limit be placed on the wealth which one person might own; and, accordingly, Congress declared that it was against the public policy of the United States for any one person to possess wealth in excess of one hundred times the average family fortune.
To bring about the redistribution of wealth, not only to give the comforts of home to the people, but to provide some of the revenue needed for expansion and improvement in
the United States, Congress imposed a capital levy tax to be levied every year on every fortune in the nation as follows:
(a) On all wealth owned by a person from 1 up to One Million Dollars, no capital tax levy, it being the policy of the law that for one to own up to a million dollars does no injury to the balance of the people having comforts of life.
(b) On all wealth which one owns above One Million Dollars and up to Two Million Dollars, a capital levy tax of 1% on the second million only.
(c) On all wealth which one owns above Two Million Dollars and up to Three Million Dollars, a capital levy tax of 2% on the third million.
(d) On all wealth which one owns above Three Million Dollars and up to Four Million Dollars, a tax of 4% on the fourth million.
(e) On all wealth which one owns above Four Million Dollars and up to Five Million Dollars, a tax of 8% on the fifth million.
(f) On all wealth which one owns above Five Million Dollars and up to Six Million Dollars, a tax of 16% on the sixth million.
(g) On all wealth which one owns above Six Million Dollars and up to Seven Million Dollars, a tax of 32% on the Seventh Million.(h) On all wealth which one owns above Seven Million Dollars and up to Eight Million Dollars, a tax of 64% on the eighth million.
(i) On all wealth which one owns above Eight Million Dollars, a tax of 99%.
Calculated by simple arithmetic the foregoing table meant that all fortunes would generally fall to a maximum limit of around Five Million Dollars to the person the first or second year, but gradually thereafter, the capital tax, being levied year after year, would reduce the largest fortune to from one to two millions of dollars.
Inasmuch as large quantities of properties could not be converted into cash to make an immediate payment, the person taxed was permitted to turn over property or cash in payment of the tax and was also allowed to pay the tax in installments.
The money and wealth thus raised for the government, under the surveys and plans arranged, was used first to supply the comforts of home and life to the masses up to a value equal to one-third of the average family wealth. The Congress provided that, in order to make such distribution of the properties turned into the United States in payment of the capital levy tax, that the Government should have the right to sell property, to transfer and exchange it for other property, to issue currency to be retired from sale and disposition of the government's properties, along the lines as followed in the Federal Land Bank financing.
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<h3>The political platform of 1935 outlined above, was a rational reaction to the consolidation of wealth by the few, to the hardship of the many. It is extreme by today's standards....but it was understandable, given the conditions at the time..</h3>
<h2>Your support of candidate Paul...isn't...</h2>
<h3>Your reaction to the information displayed in this post's first quote box</h3>....backing a candidate such as Ron Paul....a man committed to making government irrelevant in the face of the only "real" political struggle...the one between the controlling elite vs. the rest of us...<h3>is an irrational one.</h3> You only have to study the equitable wealth distribution achievments of strong populist politcal power in France, Denmark, and Sweden, to confirm what I'm telling you.
Your candidate Paul, will do nothing to slow the trend of wealth concentration, and the result will be revolutionary and not without huge, avoidable misery.
Last edited by host; 10-20-2007 at 02:31 PM..
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