PeakOil is You
This is the WORST RECOVERY EVER
Re: This is the WORST RECOVERY EVER
by kublikhan » Thu 21 Mar 2013, 15:54:08
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('topcat', 'T')he game is not rigged; money, if used properly, makes more money.
There is something wrong with the system when a CEO's secretary pays a higher tax rate than their boss. There is something wrong when a rich industrialized country like ours has wealth inequality that you would normally find in a banana republic. There is something wrong when the richest 1% of the population nearly triple their share of the economic pie, by consuming 80% of the total increase in american incomes between 1980 and 2005. $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')illionaire investor Warren Buffett will continue paying a lower tax rate than his secretary.“Counting payroll taxes, I’ll probably be the lowest paying taxpayer in the office,” Buffett told CNBC. Of the top 400 richest people, who might be making $200 million or $250 million a year, maybe half pay an income tax rate of less than 25 percent, he explained.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.
C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.
In the past, many of us acquiesced in discomfiting levels of inequality because we perceived a tradeoff between equity and economic growth. But there’s evidence that the levels of inequality we’ve now reached may actually suppress growth. A drop of inequality lubricates economic growth, but too much may gum it up.
Robert H. Frank of Cornell University, Adam Seth Levine of Vanderbilt University, and Oege Dijk of the European University Institute recently wrote a fascinating paper suggesting that inequality leads to more financial distress. They looked at census data for the 50 states and the 100 most populous counties in America, and found that places where inequality increased the most also endured the greatest surges in bankruptcies. Inequality leaves people on the lower rungs feeling like hamsters on a wheel spinning ever faster, without hope or escape. Economic polarization also shatters our sense of national union and common purpose, fostering political polarization as well.
Let’s not aggravate income gaps that already would make a Latin American caudillo proud. To me, we’ve reached a banana republic point where our inequality has become both economically unhealthy and morally repugnant.
The oil barrel is half-full.
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kublikhan - Master Prognosticator
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Re: This is the WORST RECOVERY EVER
by Plantagenet » Fri 22 Mar 2013, 11:59:11
Poverty rate jumps in the suburbs
poverty growing rapidly in the suburbs
The poverty rate has jumped by 64% in the suburbs as a result of declining home values during the great recession, and continuing job losses, student loan debt, falling wage levels since 2008 during the WORST RECOVERY EVER.
poverty growing rapidly in the suburbs
The poverty rate has jumped by 64% in the suburbs as a result of declining home values during the great recession, and continuing job losses, student loan debt, falling wage levels since 2008 during the WORST RECOVERY EVER.
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Plantagenet - Expert
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Re: This is the WORST RECOVERY EVER
by Lore » Fri 22 Mar 2013, 13:34:52
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'P')overty rate jumps in the suburbs
poverty growing rapidly in the suburbs
The poverty rate has jumped by 64% in the suburbs as a result of declining home values during the great recession, and continuing job losses, student loan debt, falling wage levels since 2008 during the WORST RECOVERY EVER.
poverty growing rapidly in the suburbs
The poverty rate has jumped by 64% in the suburbs as a result of declining home values during the great recession, and continuing job losses, student loan debt, falling wage levels since 2008 during the WORST RECOVERY EVER.
This has been going on for decades now. It was only the burst of the housing bubble and the end to the home ATM machine that has brought it more to light. Average working folks had their wealth tied up in their property. While the wealthy have it in their investments. There are far fewer rich Americans that can take up the slack of consumption by the masses of consumers that no longer have the disposable income to expand the economy to escape velocity.
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
... Theodore Roosevelt
... Theodore Roosevelt
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Lore - Fission
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