Visual Representation of American Wealth Inequality

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

SATIL, you're off your mother fukking rocker if you don't see the disparity of income and increasing gap in wealth in this country as a huge problem. Its going to end eventually though. The right can only use religion as a wedge issue for but so long. People are only now starting to feel the pinch. Give it another 20 30 years of increasing divide, of the "american dream" being even further out of reach for the majority, before CEOs have to start traveling with armed security every where they go. Repubs are going to really see this class warfare they've been crying about.

If the American dream was that any and everybody could become a 1%er then the American dream has always been a lie. But if the dream is that people could work hard and make a decent living, then it's still true + valid.

 

[GoPro]

If the American dream was that any and everybody could become a 1%er then the American dream has always been a lie. But if the dream is that people could work hard and make adecent living, then it's still true + valid.

Exactly, that "decent living" is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain because the wealthy are seizing an ever-growing proportion of the pie for no other reason but to maintain American monarchies. Profits are increasing, executive benefits are soaring, while wages are stagnant and the median income plummets. Like I said, another decade or two of this and Gothams Reckoning will be upon us

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

Exactly, that "decent living" is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain because the wealthy are seizing an ever-growing proportion of the pie for no other reason but to maintain American monarchies. Profits are increasing, executive benefits are soaring, while wages are stagnant and the median income plummets. Like I said, another decade or two of this and Gothams Reckoning will be upon us

How can wages be stagnant and income be plummeting?

And the rich's share wouldn't matter if the price of things like housing and higher education weren't skyrocketing, which again are the results of govt policy

 

[GoPro]

How can wages be stagnant and income be plummeting?

And the rich's share wouldn't matter if the price of things like housing and higher education weren't skyrocketing, which again are the results of govt policy

More people in the workforce, all entering low wage jobs

+

Preexisting low-salaried workers

=

A lower median income

You try to disassociate productivity with income, yet they used to be joined at the hip until around the 80s. You say people should save instead opting for materialism, but in a consumer-based economy, where would the money come from to save? Thin air?

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

More people in the workforce, all entering low wage jobs

+

Preexisting low-salaried workers

=

A lower median income

You try to disassociate productivity with income, yet they used to be joined at the hip until around the 80s. You say people should save instead opting for materialism, but in a consumer-based economy, where would the money come from to save? Thin air?

This would make sense, if not for the fact that baby boomers are holding onto their jobs longer due to their retirement plans getting fukked up. Youth unemployment is at an all time high, artificially inflating wages

Not to mention baby boomers are a disproportionately large age block. People say the population is set to grow but I am not so sure. Birth rates are down

 

[No1]

Actually you did say that. And I did provide an alternative, but you deemed it invalid, despite me providing examples and having done it myself. Wifey has seen 10% raises annually for the last 5 years by negotiating w/her boss, I have averaged a little less by either jumping around and negotiating. So again, the idea that the best way for people to negotiate is through unions is ridiculous. What union has been able to get their members anywhere near a 10% annual raise for even 1 year, let alone 5?


Employers and employees determine what labor is worth thousands of times a day, by offering and accepting/rejecting job offers, and through annual evaluations and raises. Again, can't tell you how many times I've heard/seen stories of people who pit employers against each other with job offers, or put in their 2 weeks and got counteroffers to stay. Its not weird or rare at all in certain industries.

Actually, I did not what you just spewed.

But let me start off by saying, I think you mean well. Your points are short-sighted, un-researched, not backed by statistical evidence and trends, public opinion, or any other discernible rubric but you seem earnest.

But anecdotal example ends like this "I did this and there's no way a union could get me better than this. So the idea that the best way for people to negotiate is through unions is false." As always, you use your limited life experiences, and your overall lack of experience dealing with labor policy to try to discern that you are credible person to speak on this subject. On anything, I will not take the time to go hit you with hard facts until you man up and bring me a legitimate argument based on societal trends and actual data. But you can't, because you don't know anything about them. I'm not doing your homework.

Unions now have the least impact they have had since like the 30s, and there isn't this widespread birth of individuals negotiating for higher wages, post people say that they fear employer's vicious responses if they do so.

Collective bargaining is akin to employers coming to all employees and saying "take a pay cut or we will fire you". The only time the latter ever happens is when the company is on the brink of going under and needs to get a hold on cash flow.

Ironically, employers of non-unionized workers can do that. Secondly, this is a bullshyt analogy. Like all your analogies. But you're good at them. The fact of the matter is this, the Clayton Act originally set forth the notion of human labor that we mostly abide by today:

"the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. Nothing contained in the antitrust laws shall be construed to forbid the existence and operation of labor….organizations….or to forbid or restrain individual members of such organizations form lawfully carrying out the legitimate objects thereof; nor shall such organizations, or the members thereof; be held or construed to be illegal combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade, under the antitrust laws."

That aside, collective bargaining largely resulted during the great depression era as the public became sympathetic to the average worker and critical of the capitalist system. It was an acknowledgement that an individual on their own does not have enough bargaining power to force the employer to bargain with them at all. It is an acknowledgement of the fact that employers can, and often will refuse to bargain over a worker's wages. The goal of the Wagner and Taft-Hartley acts, as interpreted by the court's themselves was to bring industrial peace by formalizing the bargaining process and equalizing bargaining power. It was to set up a formal mechanism and system under which the parties must bargain with each other, it does not mandate that an employer agree to any specific decision. It is to provide a voice. Countries that are on the right spectrum like the US have superior bargaining regimes and so do countries on the left. All those countries have higher wages, and higher qualities of life.

Its not an employer's obligation to pay what an employee deems to be a "living wage", its their obligation to pay their workers what their labor is worth. If a dishwasher's labor is worth $8 an hour, but $15 an hour would enable the dishwasher to drive a nice car and have a flat screen TV, why is the employer obligated to pay that $15/hr? What the dishwasher does with his money or how the dishwasher lives is not the employer's problem. If the owner of a company said "i am docking your pay so that I can take those profits and go on a nice vacation" I'm sure you would shyt a brick, but that's essentially how you just rationalized unions on behalf of the employees.

I won't even acknowledge this foolishness either than to say that you don't even know what a living wage is.

Again of all the factors driving the wealth gap, the income gap is pretty far down the list. The spiking costs + importance of healthcare and higher education are far more relevant to the avg American than CEO pay.

You did not support any of this, but whatever.

I won't even waste my time anymore trying to explain why CEO pay is important to you, you don't understand. So I'm moving on.

The income gap is obviously important because there are record profits and more wealth is being created but it's only being disbursed to a relative few, thus individuals have less money to do everything else, including to create savings...while as YOU admitted, everything costs more. The income disparity is easily one of the top 5 problems in the overall wealthy disparity debate. If I have the time I'll come back to this thread with articles for you to read to greater grasp it. shyt, I might write it myself.

Right, like the Wagner Act, which unjustifiably emboldened the UAW to its position of strength to this day

You sound like you googled the name Wagner Act. I bet you don't even know the provisions of the Act or how it works or how it was modified by Taft Hartley. I mean At someone actually sitting here attempting to argue that unions are emboldened right now in the United States

Again not true. Wifey and I are prepared to and planning on quitting both of our jobs to move down to Charlotte. I had a buddy who quit a job and was out of work for about 6-7 months until I hooked him up. None of us are anywhere near "upper management". Workers positioning themselves to weather financial storms, whether it be personal disasters or bouts of unemployment, is not the responsibility of the employer. It's the worker's responsibility to bolster themselves financially and position themselves to weather economic storms and generate more income.

As expected, you have no clue what I'm talking about. I'm trying to talk labor law in terms of the division of labor. This is entirely irrelevant to what I was talking about. It's like you read my post, didn't understand it and then copied and paste your life story. And that shyt aint that interesting...I had to breh haha

Everything, including a unit of labor, has a price, determined by the seller and the buyer agreeing on a number. The process of negotiating the price of labor is completely transparent and voluntary on the parts of both parties. Putting a gun to either side's head to skew the prices one way or another is in nobody's interest, but that is pretty much what unions do. All these platitudes of "power" and "workers" and all that horseshyt is meaningless IMO. Nobody in the US ever had to take a job at gunpoint, so whining about terms one agreed to in good faith makes no sense to me.

PLEASE go read about American Labor history and how we got to this point before you even ATTEMPT to argue with me on this subject again. Collective bargaining does not put a good to an employer's head, you obviously don't know shyt about the law. All it requires is that the employer bargain in good faith in regards to specific issues. Please name me the specific provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act that you believe hold a gun to an employer's head to do anything but meet at the table, don't even post anything else, just do that. I will wait.

Again the REAL problem isn't this power struggle with employers. That is largely borne out of the terrible financial habits of the middle class and their willing surrendering of finacial independence for consumerism and debt. But it's also borne out of skyrocketing costs of basic necessities brought on by poorly thought out govt policies.

Go ahead and defend these statements with specific policies and research. As always, I WILL WAIT. I am not going to do your homework for you.

 

[88m3]

they're going to teach you bourgeois scum in this thread someday

You can't get enough IT certs to avoid a guillotine.

 

[The Bilingual Gringo]

I think there is a lot of misconception on what wealth in general is, and people think you have to be a billionaire or even millionaire to be in this upper echelon of "power" if you will.

I think a lot of people look at financial planning as if it were some sort of luxury that's out of reach for the regular person. The person making $40K a year needs it just as much as the person making $400K a year. Trying to take what you're saving, using that accordingly and making that money you have work for you. Set up a proper estate for when you're older and pass that mentality along to the next generation and help grow from there.

I have an uncle that is INSANELY cheap, but he's got some great views on money. He'll flip a stock that issues a dividend on one month, take that dividend, find another stock that issues a dividend on a separate month and keep flipping from there, so he's constantly got something going on. He's done this for years, but he's also done this on his kids when they were born so they'd generate income at a lower tax bracket than him and even filed tax returns on them when they were infants.

 

[Richard Wright]

This issue is coming to the forefront but it will be really interesting in 15-20 years when all of the student loan retail working generation should be in the prime of their careers and theyre still working service jobs. Thats why the walton family is trying to ake over education, because in a generation or so people may have to aspire just to get those jobs even.

Classical liberal policies and free markets were great and all, but that liberalism's(closer to today's economic conservativism) being married to representative democracy has killed its virtue. The government has been for sale since JFK died and since Reagan the government has basically been an active instrument against the prosperity of the so called 99 percent, from nafta to the tax cuts to the outsourcing, wars, bailouts, glass steagall repeal, etc. Now that the govt has been taken control of it will take either a major intellectual resurgence for the every day man or a violent revolution, the ladder of which the 1 percent are obviously actively anticipating(ill give more evidence if u ask, dhs buying bullets, militarization of police, etc.)

If youre doing u and havent messed up yet its a country for you. Once u get off the fast track( do bad in hs/college, get a felony) youre fukked .

Im glad I swtiched from an economics liberal arts major to Computational Applied Math with a minor in econ( so I can learn com0arative advantage and outsource labor like my society has taught me to do).

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

Actually, I did not what you just spewed.

But let me start off by saying, I think you mean well. Your points are short-sighted, un-researched, not backed by statistical evidence and trends, public opinion, or any other discernible rubric but you seem earnest.

But anecdotal example ends like this "I did this and there's no way a union could get me better than this. So the idea that the best way for people to negotiate is through unions is false." As always, you use your limited life experiences, and your overall lack of experience dealing with labor policy to try to discern that you are credible person to speak on this subject. On anything, I will not take the time to go hit you with hard facts until you man up and bring me a legitimate argument based on societal trends and actual data. But you can't, because you don't know anything about them. I'm not doing your homework.

No union has been able to get its members a 10% raise over the last 5-6 years I have been working, I don't need to have intimate knowledge of union pay to know that. One of the refrains in this discussion is how worker pay has stagnated- that includes union labor- that includes the 11% of workers in the US who are unionized.

Unions now have the least impact they have had since like the 30s, and there isn't this widespread birth of individuals negotiating for higher wages, post people say that they fear employer's vicious responses if they do so.

Didn't you just chastize me for saying shyt without substantiating it? Where's your proof that people are scared or unable to negotiate for higher wages?

Ironically, employers of non-unionized workers can do that. Secondly, this is a bullshyt analogy. Like all your analogies. But you're good at them. The fact of the matter is this, the Clayton Act originally set forth the notion of human labor that we mostly abide by today:

"the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. Nothing contained in the antitrust laws shall be construed to forbid the existence and operation of labor….organizations….or to forbid or restrain individual members of such organizations form lawfully carrying out the legitimate objects thereof; nor shall such organizations, or the members thereof; be held or construed to be illegal combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade, under the antitrust laws."

That aside, collective bargaining largely resulted during the great depression era as the public became sympathetic to the average worker and critical of the capitalist system. It was an acknowledgement that an individual on their own does not have enough bargaining power to force the employer to bargain with them at all. It is an acknowledgement of the fact that employers can, and often will refuse to bargain over a worker's wages. The goal of the Wagner and Taft-Hartley acts, as interpreted by the court's themselves was to bring industrial peace by formalizing the bargaining process and equalizing bargaining power. It was to set up a formal mechanism and system under which the parties must bargain with each other, it does not mandate that an employer agree to any specific decision. It is to provide a voice. Countries that are on the right spectrum like the US have superior bargaining regimes and so do countries on the left. All those countries have higher wages, and higher qualities of life.

Lets get one thing clear. The idea that labor is or isn't a commodity is largely a matter of opinion. There are plenty of respected scholars who argue labor is a commodity. But I'm not even going to get into this "my scholar can beat yours" bullshyt. Opinions are like a$$holes. Why dont we look at the definition of a commodity?

Definition of COMMODITY
1
: an economic good: as
a : a product of agriculture or mining
b : an article of commerce especially when delivered for shipment <commodities futures>
c : a mass-produced unspecialized product <commodity chemicals> <commodity memory chips>
2
a : something useful or valued <that valuable commodity patience>; also : thing, entity
b : convenience, advantage
3
obsolete : quantity, lot
4
: a good or service whose wide availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (as brand name) other than price
5
: one that is subject to ready exchange or exploitation within a market <stars as individuals and as commodities of the film industry — Film Quarterly>

Is labor an economic good? Yes. Is labor something useful/valued? Yes. Is it something widely available to the point that its main brand of value is price? Yes. If you apply for a job at McDonalds, it doesn't matter who you are... you will get paid the same as anyone else doing your job at your location

Commodities are priced by free agreements between the buyer and seller. In the case of labor it's whatever hourly wage + benefits the worker agrees to take when they sign up for the job. There are already distortions written into law like minimum wage etc but that doesn't affect anywhere near as many jobs as unions do.

I won't even acknowledge this foolishness either than to say that you don't even know what a living wage is.

You did not support any of this, but whatever.

I won't even waste my time anymore trying to explain why CEO pay is important to you, you don't understand. So I'm moving on.

I accept your concessions

The income gap is obviously important because there are record profits and more wealth is being created but it's only being disbursed to a relative few, thus individuals have less money to do everything else, including to create savings...while as YOU admitted, everything costs more. The income disparity is easily one of the top 5 problems in the overall wealthy disparity debate. If I have the time I'll come back to this thread with articles for you to read to greater grasp it. shyt, I might write it myself.

If it's in the top 5, it's #5 .

You sound like you googled the name Wagner Act. I bet you don't even know the provisions of the Act or how it works or how it was modified by Taft Hartley. I mean At someone actually sitting here attempting to argue that unions are emboldened right now in the United States

You're repeating yourself

As expected, you have no clue what I'm talking about. I'm trying to talk labor law in terms of the division of labor. This is entirely irrelevant to what I was talking about. It's like you read my post, didn't understand it and then copied and paste your life story. And that shyt aint that interesting...I had to breh haha

PLEASE go read about American Labor history and how we got to this point before you even ATTEMPT to argue with me on this subject again. Collective bargaining does not put a good to an employer's head, you obviously don't know shyt about the law. All it requires is that the employer bargain in good faith in regards to specific issues. Please name me the specific provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act that you believe hold a gun to an employer's head to do anything but meet at the table, don't even post anything else, just do that. I will wait.





Go ahead and defend these statements with specific policies and research. As always, I WILL WAIT. I am not going to do your homework for you.

All the condescension is really unnecessary. Let me know what you disagree with and what you want to substantiate and I will respond accordingly.

 

[Richard Wright]

Theres 7 billion people here and the majority of them can do anything any of the other low skilled people do. This isnt ford 40 years ago no one values a man's back anymore.

 

[DEAD7]

Attempts to "spread the wealth" are the cause for its concentration.


Kinda funny really.