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Income Inequality

What should be done to battle income inequality in the USA?

  • Do not intervene

    Votes: 39 53.4%

  • Yes, do intervene

    Votes: 34 46.6%
  • Total voters
    73
Unrepresented said:
Workers in China, India, and Mexico should be working under the same protections as US workers. If they're underpaying them and working in sweatshops with no environmental standards, they shouldn't be entering our market and undercutting our workers.
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Keep dreaming dude. lets stick to reality and the reality is pillow headed US utopians aren't going to tell China and India how to treat their low skilled workers
 
TurtleDude said:
Keep dreaming dude. lets stick to reality and the reality is pillow headed US utopians aren't going to tell China and India how to treat their low skilled workers
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That's what tariffs are for. If we deicide to only allow goods into our nation that come from nations with fair treatment of workers we could level the imbalance quickly for both middle class workers here and sweatshops there.
 
Unrepresented said:
The laws are insufficient as written and enforced to create a robust middle class. Workers are not protected enough.
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Care to share with us your views on what needs to be done? I am interested.
 
Unrepresented said:
That's what tariffs are for. If we deicide to only allow goods into our nation that come from nations with fair treatment of workers we could level the imbalance quickly for both middle class workers here and sweatshops there.
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more pillow headed nonsense. then other countries retaliate and the cost of goods for US citizens goes way up
 
Lakeside said:
Care to share with us your views on what needs to be done? I am interested.
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income redistribution, confiscatory taxes and more sloths sucking on the public teat I suspect
 
ocean515 said:
No, all the same subject, if you followed the thread. It has to do with union dues, how it's collected, who it's collected from, and how it is spent. I cited the recent Supreme Court case as an example because it illustrated that unions, including those in California, most certainly do use dues for political purposes, which you tried to suggest is not allowed by law.

Their ruling was that unions, and state legislatures they bought to pass the legislation, can't reclassify home health care workers as public employees and then in collusion with state officials, become the lone bargaining force allowed to collect dues from people who don't want to join. The whole purpose in California, where this home health care scam originated, was to stuff the coffers of the union so it could spend $10's of millions on political issues. The SEIU is on the Board of George Soros Democracy Alliance, along with other Progressive forces like the NEA, and the AFL-CIO.

The collective bargaining aspect has nothing to do with the issue of what unions can do with dues and politics.
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I'm not sure why you brought it up, then, since the discussion was about unions and what they can and can't do with dues.

Do you have any thoughts about the other issues I brought up originally, or are you just focused on the evils of unions?
 
Dittohead not! said:
I'm not sure why you brought it up, then, since the discussion was about unions and what they can and can't do with dues.

Do you have any thoughts about the other issues I brought up originally, or are you just focused on the evils of unions?
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I brought it up because I couldn't find anything supporting your claim. What I did find was recent court rulings that curtailed the practice, which suggests it has been legal to use dues to fund political activity.

If it was already illegal, they wouldn't need the court to rule again.
 
ocean515 said:
I brought it up because I couldn't find anything supporting your claim. What I did find was recent court rulings that curtailed the practice, which suggests it has been legal to use dues to fund political activity.

If it was already illegal, they wouldn't need the court to rule again.
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The Supreme Court didn't curtail the practice. It expanded it to make it legal to spend the money for political ads.

Now, I think we've pretty much exhausted the union vs non union issue. What about the other points I brought up originally, to wit:

Raise the cap on Social Security,
Encourage unionization of workers.
Get rid of minimum wage and welfare benefits. Substitute the government as the employer of last resort.
Quit just playing lip service to ending illegal immigration,
Get the cost of health insurance off of the backs of the employers.
Treat all income as equal for tax purposes. No special rates for capital gains.
Don't bail out entities "too big to fail" then let them pay their chiefs multi billion dollar "bonuses."

That would be a good start.
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Dittohead not! said:
The Supreme Court didn't curtail the practice. It expanded it to make it legal to spend the money for political ads.

Now, I think we've pretty much exhausted the union vs non union issue. What about the other points I brought up originally, to wit:
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LOL

Not interested. Just needed to correct the misinformation you were posting. That has been done. Carry on. :peace
 
Lakeside said:
Care to share with us your views on what needs to be done? I am interested.
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Stuff you'll generally disagree with.:D

Tying executive compensation to worker pay is one area which goes to ensure all are befitting more equally from a strongly preforming company.

Protecting international workers and environments to level the playing field that selects against American workers and manufacturing.

Single payer healthcare so that employees can negotiate income separately from benefits.

A more robust retirement program to supplement the historic drop in defined pension programs for American workers.

An overtime structure that doesn't discriminate against workers combining multiple part time jobs to achieve full time employment.

A reversal of "right to work" laws, which primarily serve business interests rather than worker interests.

Raising minimum wage.

Increased public funding for higher education. Companies expecting highly trained employees should contribute to the cost of educating them, rather than forcing a crippling debt load onto those least capable of immediately repaying it.
TurtleDude said:
more pillow headed nonsense. then other countries retaliate and the cost of goods for US citizens goes way up
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You can be dismissive, but these aren't unsolvable issues, even if there will be compromise in order to actually solve them.
 
Cephus said:
No, but her father and grandfather certainly were.
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But you said all wealthy people were more intelligent and so on.. her grandfather is dead, and her father got his money from his father. It is pretty easy to "make money" once you have money after all.

No income inequality has everything to do with education and access to said education and the ability of society to take of people in need (yes healthcare costs among other things). The countries with least income inequality all have one thing in common... free or very low cost education that means where you were born and in what income class has very little to do with your future. In places like Denmark, Sweden and so on, being born in a poor ghetto, on a farm or to the richest 1% families has very little impact on what you do with your life. If you have the intelligence and the grades, then you can become anything you want and the cost aspect has been removed. That means the bricklayers son, who traditionally would get remain in the same type of job as his father and his fathers father, has the ability to climb the economic and social ladder. It works, my family and most Danes are clear examples of this.
 
Ikari said:
The majority problem is with government oversight and corporate welfare. The rules would need to be changed to hold everyone to the same standards, and we'd have to stop allowing the government to bail out losers of economic games, the market would have to take care of it.

FDA? Probably would still exist on some level. OSHA? Of course. It's not to say that government intervention is always bad or unwarranted. Sometimes the market will not have innate limitations that need to be enforced by an outside source. But when it entangles so completely and then starts to select winners itself, we move away from the Free Market system.
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You understand why I have to ask, right? The meaning of "free market" is radically different, depending on who is using the term. Especially when it's libertarians. For the most part, I agree with you. Yeah, consumer protection by non profit third party. Not a bad idea. Yeah, worker protection, by the same. Again, super good.

Financial pitfall protection? Hmmm....maybe rethink that, unless, of course, large companies are willing to socialize their profits, in addition to their risks...?

I would go on and say that the FDIC might be a good place to hack and slash. Why should banks have such protections? Make no mistake, FDIC insured is there for the BANK'S protection, not the customer. The FDIC exists to ensure the bank's money (customers) against the bank making really really bad decisions. Sounds a lot like a bail out, doesn't it?
 
Geoist said:
Fred Foldvary has an excellent article on the causes and possible solutions to poverty
Foldvary on Fixing Capitalism

While some wealth inequality is perfectly natural, the privatization of our commons without proper restitution is a major contributor to the inequality we are seeing.



Continuing growth of inequality, unrest, more crime, possible revolution.



Replace our current tax system with LVT and create a citizens dividend.
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The problem there is so many people will view that as full blown socialism, which is akin to the boogey man.
 
TurtleDude said:
workers who want to be middle class in terms of US standards need to be able to compete better than the middle classes in India, China, Mexico etc
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Which is another way of saying, they need to be willing to work for around the same pay.


Devastating economic effects, truly the wisdom of short sighted economic planning.
 
TurtleDude said:
Keep dreaming dude. lets stick to reality and the reality is pillow headed US utopians aren't going to tell China and India how to treat their low skilled workers
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They will if they want to sell their **** here.
 
TurtleDude said:
more pillow headed nonsense. then other countries retaliate and the cost of goods for US citizens goes way up
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And voila, all the sudden made in US **** starts looking better and better to the walmart shoppers here.
 
KevinKohler said:
You understand why I have to ask, right? The meaning of "free market" is radically different, depending on who is using the term. Especially when it's libertarians. For the most part, I agree with you. Yeah, consumer protection by non profit third party. Not a bad idea. Yeah, worker protection, by the same. Again, super good.

Financial pitfall protection? Hmmm....maybe rethink that, unless, of course, large companies are willing to socialize their profits, in addition to their risks...?

I would go on and say that the FDIC might be a good place to hack and slash. Why should banks have such protections? Make no mistake, FDIC insured is there for the BANK'S protection, not the customer. The FDIC exists to ensure the bank's money (customers) against the bank making really really bad decisions. Sounds a lot like a bail out, doesn't it?
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The FDIC exists because we saw what happened when everyone tried to withdraw their money from the banks at once at the start of the Great Depression. It's there so people feel that their money is safe, and don't stage a run on the banks.
 
Dittohead not! said:
The FDIC exists because we saw what happened when everyone tried to withdraw their money from the banks at once at the start of the Great Depression. It's there so people feel that their money is safe, and don't stage a run on the banks.
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Right. Because, otherwise, we wouldn't use banks, and that would be catastrophic for a lot of rich people. And those runs on banks prior to the great depression were the direct result of miss handling of funds BY those banks. It's a pre bailout, bailout, for banks.
 
TurtleDude said:
you failed to prove your point.
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No you failed to prove yours. Again I was alive is not any sort of proof. I proved that millions were starving under dde and the problem has only gotten worse since. Your confused about what "starving" is...

try being open minded for once.

What's your religion?
 
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iliveonramen said:
There's a lot of discussion about school choice. I haven't been able to find any but for the people that act as if it's a no brainer, which country that beats the US in test scores use a private system or a system that includes lots of private schools?

Most I've found are highly centralized public school system and teacher are typically well paid. In some of the countries teachers are revered by society.

If there is a school system out there performing well with a public private mix or heavily private I can see how some people might point to that as why we should go private but at the moment, all I see is trillion in potential wealth to private companies at stake and huge PR campaigns in which what's promised doesn't pan out.
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Such a good argument.

To add to it the literacy rates in america are also very skewed. For example their are loads of kids in my city that cannot read or right properly, cannot do math at all, and certainly no nothing of science and history, they are far from "literate" They have high school diplomas though because the teachers/schools are soooooooooo underfunded (thanks to ppl like tom Corbet) that they allow them to graduate anyway and simply don't have the time to make sure a class of 50 kids can do the simple things necessary for life...

Its really sad... :(
 
b_dubz said:
Such a good argument.

To add to it the literacy rates in america are also very skewed. For example their are loads of kids in my city that cannot read or right properly, cannot do math at all, and certainly no nothing of science and history, they are far from "literate" They have high school diplomas though because the teachers/schools are soooooooooo underfunded (thanks to ppl like tom Corbet) that they allow them to graduate anyway and simply don't have the time to make sure a class of 50 kids can do the simple things necessary for life...

Its really sad... :(
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I'm going to assume the misspellings are ironic.
 
Unrepresented said:
Stuff you'll generally disagree with.:D

Tying executive compensation to worker pay is one area which goes to ensure all are befitting more equally from a strongly preforming company.

Protecting international workers and environments to level the playing field that selects against American workers and manufacturing.

Single payer healthcare so that employees can negotiate income separately from benefits.

A more robust retirement program to supplement the historic drop in defined pension programs for American workers.

An overtime structure that doesn't discriminate against workers combining multiple part time jobs to achieve full time employment.

A reversal of "right to work" laws, which primarily serve business interests rather than worker interests.

Raising minimum wage.

Increased public funding for higher education. Companies expecting highly trained employees should contribute to the cost of educating them, rather than forcing a crippling debt load onto those least capable of immediately repaying it.

You can be dismissive, but these aren't unsolvable issues, even if there will be compromise in order to actually solve them.
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Very nice wish list. I am not crying on your shoulder here, but I come from a very poor family. My mother raised 3 children while never having a job that paid more than minimum wage. I was taught at a very early age that "what you put into something is what you get out of it". We were never taught the new American way of having envy or being jealous of others. I never went to college. I work when I want and choose who I work for. I don't have a 9 to 5 job. I generally work 6-7 months out of the year and make over 6 figures. I keep my mortgage paid up for 6 months in advance. I am married and my wife does not have to work. I pay for our health insurance. As I said before my Mother never had a job that paid more than minimum wage and she was able to retire at 62 years of age. She knew how to invest her nickels and dimes and lives very comfortable now. So please forgive if I cannot fathom how others cannot do the same thing. I am a firm believer in giving people a helping hand when it is needed, but not for generations of welfare leeches. Good luck with your dream list.
 
Unrepresented said:
I'm going to assume the misspellings are ironic.
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Haha no that would be auto correct and me not noticing its wrong, I gotta figure out how to get auto correct off aggressive... Its not misspelled its misused.

And tapatalk won't let me edit for some reason...
 
Lakeside said:
Very nice wish list. I am not crying on your shoulder here, but I come from a very poor family. My mother raised 3 children while never having a job that paid more than minimum wage. I was taught at a very early age that "what you put into something is what you get out of it". We were never taught the new American way of having envy or being jealous of others. I never went to college. I work when I want and choose who I work for. I don't have a 9 to 5 job. I generally work 6-7 months out of the year and make over 6 figures. I keep my mortgage paid up for 6 months in advance. I am married and my wife does not have to work. I pay for our health insurance. As I said before my Mother never had a job that paid more than minimum wage and she was able to retire at 62 years of age. She knew how to invest her nickels and dimes and lives very comfortable now. So please forgive if I cannot fathom how others cannot do the same thing. I am a firm believer in giving people a helping hand when it is needed, but not for generations of welfare leeches. Good luck with your dream list.
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And let me guess she never used welfare or any other form of public assistance? And frankly your probably full of bs... Your math just does not add up (for you or your mom)

What's your job that let's you work part time n make 6 figures?
 
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