I am going to keep this short, but I urge you to read the examples I've previously posted at the three links below, to get a sense about why I am taking the opposite side of the argument of this, from the Politics Thread titled "Inequality":
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Originally Posted by loquitur
Actually, MM, if you look at what I was saying, I was positing that there is a level of income below which we should be concerned about the person. In a rich society like ours everyone should have access to basic nutrition, clothing and shelter. But if a person's basic needs are taken care of, then no, I don't think income inequality in and of itself is a problem.
At some point, railing against the "rich" is just plain and simple envy, which is a poisonous emotion, more for the person who has it than that person's target. And then there is the question of how you define "rich" - I have yet to get a coherent definition from the redistributionists that amounts to anything other than "someone who has more than I do." And bear in mind that that works both ways: there are people who have less than you who would want some of what YOU have, too. To them, YOU'RE rich. Whatever principle you might articulate to justify taking stuff away from people who have more than you merely because they have it can also be used to justify taking stuff away from you.
Where I'm going with this is here: at least in this country, <h2>simple inequality of income in and of itself is not a bad thing, unless the inequality came about because of theft or some other kind of bad conduct.</h2> If you're talking about ancien regime France, or Tsarist Russia, with a hereditary and useless aristocracy, that's one thing. <h3>But that's not this country. Most wealth in this country is earned. Yes, there is a luck element - there always is - but it doesn't explain all the disparities even remotely.</h3>
I have yet to hear an explanation of why simple inequality of income, in and of itself, is something we have to somehow "fix", when there are so many other unequal endowments people have that no one seems to be interested in fixing. Some people happen to be very good at making money. Other people, like me, are good at other things. So?
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Is loquitur's premise, "most wealth in this country is earned", when we consider great wealth, an accurate statement, or does he just assume it is accurate? Doesn't the "grease" from massively increasing wealth, even if it is legal influence....political contributions, influencing zoning boards to transform the marginal property you have an opportunity to purchase, into prime zoned land, compared to the clout that you or I could wield with zoning officials, really the difference? Don't even the legitimately wealthy have ways to creat their "own opportunities", to open doors mostly closed to the rest of us, that consolidate their opportutnities, and thus, rob the rest of us of our potential ones....the opportunity cost to the rest of scoiety....that today, in retail, and in shopping center development, only a Walmart can wield and reap the benefits from?
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...8&postcount=39
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...6&postcount=54
More support for post at preceding link:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...7&postcount=41
I read loquitur's post on the other thread (he made it clear that he did not want a discussion like the one I want to have here, happen in his thread, even though he posted statements like the one I highlighted in his post copied above), so I created this thread as a forum for this tangent of discussion.
At the first link I posted above, I provided support for statements I posted there that made the points that the CEO of the largest US Bank, and the CEO of the largest US Brokerage, both made public statements, last Sept/Oct, concerning the losses that their firms would be announcing in the near term, that they absolutely had to know to be false....they both dramatically understated the limpending loss amounts. The immediate results were that they "stabalized" the stock market indexes, and reversed the plummeting share prices of their own firms.
Both CEO's were forced to resign, shortly after these events, but they were allowed to leave with additional amounts of $100 to $200 million, each. The impact of their false statements benfited their firms, but negatively impacted the wealth of those who believed them and held stocks, or bought more, instead of selling at much higher price levels at that time, than were available later.....
I also documented, in that same post, the fact that the original parent of the bank described above, Citi Group, was National City Bank, and the fact that it's chairman, Mr. Mitchell, was found to have committed fraud and manipulation against his bank's pre-depression and depression era investors, according to the 1932 US Senate investigation led by attorney Ferdinand Pecora:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...6&postcount=29
In the last two links above, I documented my example of John McCain, and the background of his in-law's and now his, tremendous wealth.
Do we all agree that personal assets of $100 million or more, these days, is tremendous wealth?
I detailed, and I think....thoroughly supported the facts that McCain married into a family where his bride's father had a well publicized background as a convicted felon who was employed by the wealthiest man in Arizona, Kemper Marley, for at least eight years, and was arrested on felony liquor distribution charges twice while employed by this man, and convicted on federal felony charges the first time. I also documented that the man McCain's father worked for was suspected of ordering a "mob hit" against an investigative reporter who exposed his organized crime activities in the local newspaper, and that a close acquaintance of this man was convicted, and is serving a life term for car bombing the reporter.
I documented that McCain's father-in-law, along with his brother, also convicted and imprisoned in the first liquor felony arrest, and arrested in the second liquor felony indictment, and later convicted and imprisoned twice more on income tax evasion charges, bought a horse racing track in neighboring New Mexico, in 1953. and denied in a Gaming Commission hearing that an individual with mob gambling ties, "Teak" Baldwin, was their partner. Two years later it was determined that that the individual was an equal partner in the race track purchase with the two brothers. A New Mexico state police investigation of the brothers and their hidden partner, Baldwin found that the brothers' employer in Arizona, Kemper Marley,
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http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...48#post2398348
....The 1953 State Police report in connection with it's Arizona investigation of the Hensleys and Baldwin noted Marley "owned a wire service formerly operated in connection with bookmaking of the Al Capone gang."
The same report listed Baldiwn as a "bookmaker for leading tracks" and said that Marley "is reputed to be the financial backer for bookies..."
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I documented that McCain's father-in-law sold his share of the racetrack in 1955 and was somehow able to buy the Budweiser beer distributorship business in Phoenix, at a time when his former employer, Kemper Marley's United Liquor distributors enjoyed a monopoly of the sales of all liquor in Arizona.
I posted the details of the company that held the race track refreshment concession contract at the brothers' horse racing track, a firm that financed the later purchase of the track from McCain's father-in-law's brother and partners, to new owners, along with the remaing years of the concession contract at the track.
The last words of the dying, car bombed investigative reporter, including the name of this sports venue refreshments concessionaire, "EMPRISE". The articles the reporter published, indicated that Emprise had become a lender to professional sports team owners, and was transitioning into actually purchasing some of the teams. The reported published his question of whether those purchases would put the Buffalo, NY company, known to have well documented relationships with organized crime, into the position of being able to actually influence the outcomes of professional sports contest, presumably for the purposes of benefiting sports betting bookmakers.....
Today, the company founded by McCain's in-law has been described as the fifth largest beer distributor in the country, and McCain and his mobster's daughter wife are worth $50 to $100 million, all from the profits of his in-law's businessed. The Business nets $50 million per year, and his wife, the potential first lady of the USA, is the firm's chairwomen.
The holding company that Emrpise has morphed into, is now called Delaware North Corp., and the owners, the Jacob's family of Buffalo, were described as having net worth of $600 million and owning businesses with annual revenues over $1 billion, in a <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F01E5DD1F3AF935A2575BC0A96E958260">NY Times article</a> ten years ago.
My core point is that the issue is not as easy to determine as loquitur described..... Kemper Marley and McCain's father in law, and the owners of Emprise/Delaware North, extract both wealth and opportunity cost from the rest of us, first by engaing in organized crime activity that the system does not confront and constrain, for a variety of reasons....corruption of regulators and law enforcement via bribes, political contributions to politicians who help thugs to thrive in their illegal and then laundered business acitivities, instead of representing the rest of our interests in government and in society, and through the impact of what the impression on the rest of us that their organized, illegal activities, effect.
They corrupt "the system" to the point where we lose faith in it, and perversely embrace, "private business"...."private capital", when we should actually be embracing tax policies that fucking confiscate it, to mitigate what all of the unenforced, unmitigated, illegal, unethical, and cronyized activity has taken away from the rest of us.
<h3>Instead, we observe a vehement "hands off" attitude towards those worth $100 million, and up, and we have a focus on demonizing the poorest and most powerless, because they are "the takers"....WTF?</h3>
I am not saying that everyone who controls $100 million or more is a crook, a thug, or a thief, but you don't get there by being an altar boy or a descendant or heir of an altar boy, either.
<h3>If we could reach a consensus of whether, given where all of his assets and the money that supported his initial political career came from, and the fact that he had to know, early on....about the background of his father-in-law and the source of the man's initial business investment, and the circumstances of his opportunity to buy such a "one of a kind" beer distribution business originated from, I think we would progress a long way on reaching some agreement about what society driving goverment, can and should do to confront and to mitigate growing wealth inequity in the US.</h3>
Mericfully, none of this discussion needs to focus of whether the poorest are truly poor if they own a microwave and a dvd player, or not.
We can shift discussion to whether they were wronged if they are working behind the counter of a sports venue refreshment concession, and paid a shitty li'l wage and no benefits because Delaware North even exists today, to own the concession's contract, and maybe the sports team itself, vs. whether it had it's ass shutdown, 60 years ago, when then incorruptible public enforcement officials, prosecuted it's mobbed up founder, as they should have, instead of accepting bribes to look the other way, and the assets of Emprise, way back then, were confiscated by a criminal court judge.