LOL! You mean to tell me you are an employee of the federal government, and bitching about one of the most stable employers today, your own no less?
yes. that's called "not being a hypocrite". though I find it interesting that not being completely self-seeking counts in your eyes as reducing my credibility.
Let's see, the richest 20% own 85% of the wealth now, what do you claim the ration was 30 years ago?
I couldn't care less as it is immaterial to the discussion at hand. the question was not who had what in comparison to each other, but the
wealth redistribution - the
active redistribution of wealth naturally attained by private citizens.
So, for example, if one year you make $100,000, and I make $30,000; and the next year you make $125,000 and I still make $30,000; but we institute a redistributionist policy that has the effect of taking 5K from you and giving it to me - then the
redistribution of wealth is occurring from the higher income earner to the lower income earner, irrespective of the fact that your adjusted income increase (20K) grew by four times my own.
I'm so happy for you, unfortunately for the conservatives, the majority of the country has been forced into higher debt through lowered income relative to inflation and taxes.
that is incorrect - the people of this nation have gone into debt because we became poor savers and stupid profligate spenders. we weren't forced by taxation and inflation to take out HELOCs in order to buy the latest plasma - we
chose to do that. Income has risen over the time period that you claim that it has flatlined in real terms - but even if it
had flatlined in real terms, then the ability of the American people to save
would be the exact same.
we weren't forced to move from a nation of savers to a nation of debtors. we
chose to do that.
It already was in 2007. Are you talking about the compensations that are being taken away such as the teacher's compensation's for ****ty pay?
teachers generally don't get "****ty pay". they get okay to good pay - and I would like to see that pay increase for teachers of quality. what they
do get, thanks to the fact that it is the path of least resistance for administrators under union pressure, is gold-plated benefits packages. this tends to lock teachers into the system - because their overall compensation is tilted towards the end of their career rather than tilting compensation towards performance.
but yes, generally, benefits have risen faster than paychecks - largely because if I, as an employer, give an employee a 10,000 dollar raise, then I have to pay my share of the FICA tax on it, and he has to pay his share of the FICA tax on it, and then he has to pay the income tax on it; so it comes down me giving him an increase in compensation of about $8,000 at a cost of 10,700. If I simply purchase him $10,000 worth of free healthcare (or any other benefit), then he get's an increase in compensation at a cost of $10,000. that's rough numbers, but it ought to give you a general idea of why employers and employees have been tending towards the latter rather than the former.
All the middle class has to do is to learn to lower our standard of living, right?
certainly we need to lower our level of consumption. one of the silver linings of the recession is that we seem to have done so, and we will hope that that trend back to savings will be habit-forming.
Where is this binge spending problem by the middle class that I missed?
really?
our spending has skyrockted, and it has risen
much faster than our paychecks:
and so we've gone deeper and deeper into debt to spend more and more:
we've spent the last 20 or so years in a spending
binge; we wanted bigger houses, we wanted the latest plasma television, we wanted the latest iPhone, and we were going to drive to buy these things in brand new SUV's that barely fit through the drive-through where we picked up our daily $5.35 grand non fat mocha cappuccino with whip cream and cinammon swirls. the Boomers have lived their
entire lives in the sense that they were entitled to instant gratification, and as they hit their peak earning years and their kids graduated from college they decided they could spend whatever they wanted and so they went
nuts.
I was sort of under the impression that manufactures were not producing because there is no demand.
since the latest Recession kicked off and we stayed stuck there, yes. since 1980, however, our consumption has skyrocketed.
Sounds to me like you are going to have a hard time selling that case to the middle class voters.
middle class voters seem to have already decided on it themselves. but yes, this year Republicans will have to run on a platform of getting people who have lived their lives in a cocoon of instant-gratification on growing up and accepting economic reality.
You see that "all" part is what ain't been happening over the last 30 years. Very key that "all" is!
every income quintile has gotten wealthier over the last 30 years - the difference is in the rates of advancement.
Again, total BS, but a great campaign slogan for your side
no, actually that's pretty solidly statistically accurate - as
your own cited study says; out of all the ways in which people fall out of the middle class, the first is getting divorced, and the second is never getting married in the first place. and it's not all that great a slogan - it's awkward, difficult to address, and doesn't provide something simple and catchy. it's a poor slogan, in fact, it just happens to be socioeconomic reality.
Because it is a dip**** idea that even the GOP wouldn't dare suggest. Social Security doesn't have a financial problem, the general fund has a financial problem.
:lol: yes, as in it can't pay out to Social Security what it has promised. which means that now, yes, Social Security has a problem. Mind you, it's a problem that pales next to
Medicare, but a problem nonetheless. however, the funding doesn't really address that issue - my plan
increased by several factors the benefit that would go to low-income workers, and the left wanted no part of helping them get into a better plan.
Actually, it looked like it was written by a Nobel prize winning economist that wrote it.
then he sucks at forming tightly written logically consistent article-length arguments.
Right out of Fascism 101 that one is.
separating performance from compensation is indeed a facet of corporatism, which is the economic philosophy of Fascism, that is correct.
If you can't afford education it is of little benefit.
which would cause me to look askance at the government interference that is responsible for the high inflation in education costs that we have seen lately.
fortunately, given the raw amount of scholarships and other programs designed specifically to make college more affordable, it generally is to any who is capable and willing to go. one of my good buddies is in his sophomore year right now - the man is a product of the street - raised in a single parent home, dropped out of high school in order to sell drugs, etc. how can he afford school? because he decided to improve himself - so he joined the military.
Agreed, there is a greater need for more affordable education. It should be a priority.
definitely. fortunately, there is a proven system for producing superior results with lower costs. it is called
competition.
And so easily solvable, just crack down on the employer's of illegal immigrants.
agreed 100%. I like what Oklahoma did a few years back.
It came from a misinterpretation of the Census data.
what? it came
directly from the Census data.
No, GOP submitted bills to cut family planning, and they wish to cut funding for the support of children after they are born.
you seem to have "giving people money to engage in irresponsible behavior" confused with "helping them".
Another good reason not to cut funding for family planning as the GOP has proposed.
on the contrary; it is a good reason to bring back the notion that you have and raise children in the context of two-parent families.
You have no clue about the socio-economic reasons for the above list, do you? You see it simply as someone being too lazy to pull himself up by his bootstrap with his own little white hand, right?
this is called an ad hominem fallacy - it's used when you are incapable of answering the
data.