Distribution of wealth in the USA

This video, or one like it, came out last year at about Mitt Romney was reducing the value of the 47% to not being worth the effort.
 The figures were what prompted the whole Occupy Wall Street movement ( which is still healthy, BTW.  It's volunteers were very active after Hurricane Sandy, while FEMA was spinning its wheels.)

It's an imbalance that cannot hold.

10/20/2013

                      I still see the Democratic Left and we know who you are , are
                      willing to destroy this country and make it a third world country.
                      Don't you think they've destroyed the country enough...It'll take
                     to bring it back to what the USA use to be.......... Joe

Money makes money. People complain about the uneven distribution but contribute to it. When the real author of the Galbraith novel was revealed, the book sales went through the roof. Everybody wanted a copy. The fact that they were hoodwinked didn't matter. It happens all the time in all businesses and all industries. We complain about the wealthy even when we are the ones making them wealthy.

I have no problem with wealth.  A good example of a responsible corporation is Costco.  I won't extoll their merits here, but companies do exist across the U.S. and abroad that are responsible citizens of the world, their nations and their communities and provide fair treatment for their employees while still making a profit for their executives and stockholders. This includes a wide range of small to medium to global corporations, and they should be recognized and set as examples.

My issue is with those greedy, self-serving global entities who have lost all consideration for the human side of enterprise and concentrate only on the profit regardless of collateral damage.  They damage the eco-system, provide no returns to their communities, use every ruse possible to avoid taxes and contributing to the nations from which they derive their profits, provide excess to executives and put their employees in a position of taking further from the economy because they qualify for public services due to their low pay and lack of benefits. They enslave employees in desperate nations for their production of goods to sell back where they contribute nothing. Those who derive their wealth from this type endeavor are not to be admired from any perspective.  They also have the international power and wealth to control the political system in the U.S. and in other countries; they use that power to their benefit and do not raise up the people and also destroy the environment.

Since we have chosen to live in society with one another, we have the responsibility to care for one another also.  That includes those least able to lobby for their own benefit because they are struggling just to survive.  They are not to be demeaned but rather assisted with the basics of life, education, work training and opportunities so they may become productive if their impediments are not too great.  

Those to whom the society has afforded many opportunities have the greatest capacity to return an appropriate measure to assist others without making their own lifestyle less.

That is not a "liberal" point of view, it is a humane point of view once shared by people regardless of their political associations.

good post, DK.

The problem isn't coming from people with wealth.  Many have worked hard and provide services that enhance the lives of others.  It's those entities you spoke of that become the problem,  In many of them, the system has become more important than the people involved.  They aren't working for the CEO's so much as they work for the corporation.  The humanity is lost.The few officers at the top who are siphoning such large quantities of the system's energy, or the money the system generates, have little interaction with the individuals who do the work that keeps the system going, and don't see the employees as people so much as statistics.

The same dehumanizing can be seen in our insurance and healthcare systems.

So why do we buy cheap products from overseas? Why do we make sportsmen/rock stars/film stars et al into the super rich? If we want to change the world, it's up to us, isn't it? It won't happen. It isn't what people want. That's why they buy lottery tickets. They would sooner take one dollar off a million people to become an overnight millionaire than stop buying things that make someone else into a billionaire.

10/21/2013

                   This is to show you what bastards the federal govt. is, this complex
                   was especially builty for deaf people, now Hud wants to evict people
                   at this complex because it's not mixed and this was built just for deaf
                  people read on....

                                 http://www.kpho.com/story/20320760/valley-deaf-residents-worry-feds-will-evict-them

                                                                    Joe..........

I recently finished editing a book that was written for parents and teachers of deaf and hearing-impaired children - the other end of the spectrum, yes, but there are some common difficulties involved.

There is disagreement among parents as to whether or not the children should be educated in the same school, in mainstreamed/inclusive settings,  or whether they should have the right to teir own special classes.  The statistics show a difference in attitude between deaf children with hearing parents as opposed to those whose parents are also hearing impaired. Hearing parents are more inclined to push for resolutions that make their children seem more "normal," while deaf parents are more concerned for the  acceptance of their deafness and work to see the children to be seen as simply a different part of a diverse community.

While it is understandable, I think, especially with the elderly, that there might be a preference for living among other people with the same conditions,   I don't know if federal funding can go so far as to allow for this convenience, though.and they have a right to live in homes or apartments with the special arrangements and devices that make living an easier task.

I once taught in a school that was set up to comply with desegregation orders from the federal government.  One requirement was that enrollment had to have the same ethnic ratio as the other schools in the district, and that meant some minority students were turned away.  Otherwise, the situation that led to the school's existence might develop on that campus as well.  The regulations have to take in such considerations, and that would include, in the instance of the senior housing, doing what is most economically feasible.

It would be a shame if some residents were required to leave.  I would think that someone would be available to help them find other places that would still serve their special needs.

Found today on Facebook:


Time4Change

10/21/2013


                              Sounds like a Russian to me ......

                                 Cheers...Joe...

The Little Prince by Antoine St. Exupery

10/21/2013

                       I told you it was that communist Putin......

                                        Cheers.......Joe.. 

If you won $1,000,000 on the lottery would you:

1. Keep it and buy expensive presents for your friends/family, but maintain control over the actual money.
   
   
2. Share it with one other person (that way you get to keep $500,000).
   
   
3. Share it with 19 people. You would still have $50,000 that you didn't have before you won.
   
   
4. Share it with 100 people and have $10,000 that you didn't have before.
   
   
5. Give it all away. You wouldn't be any better off, but think of the joy you would be giving to others.
   
   
6. Invest the money to make more money. Use the unearned interest to provide jobs for unemployed people. 
   

What do most lottery winners do?

10/21/2013

                   I would say help other people to a point, pay off your bills, invest
                  for a rainy day, give to charities like Wounded Warriors, St. Judes.

                                                   Cheers.....Joe..

deleted

The National Lottery has created 3,000 millionaires in its time - dishing out over £8.5 billion. Some 15% of people start a new business with the money they win - while 9% go into business with a friend. Between them their businesses employ 3,195 people. That's £8.5 billion spent to create 3,195 jobs.

http://money.aol.co.uk/2013/07/08/what-do-lottery-winners-spend-their-money-on/

10/21/2013

                    I don't know what the figures are here in the USA, every State
                   has a lottery and each state has several lotteries. Matter of fact
                   to show you how dumb the politicians are in this country, no one
                   has come up with a national lottery ( Federal) with several top
                   prizes and the money they collected would pay the federal debt
                   off in less than a year..

                                                         Cheers...Joe..

10/22/2013

                               Don... ...... 


                                     Here's a great article I just read on how AMericans are being
            dropped by their health insurance companies....Horrible !!!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/21/health-care-cancelled-obamacare_n_4138129.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl12%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D394675

                                                                     Cheers....Joe

Don Stephens wrote:

Capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth -- communism is the equal distribution of poverty.

i.e to reduce world poverty, you must first produce wealth.

Shelagh wrote:

The system works when we are close to the ideal.  When all of the wealth stays at the top, as in the last graph, rather than being put back into the economy, it stagnates..Those who would be creating jobs are struggling to survive.

It gets back to that earlier graph - Maslow's needs hierarchy


When so many people are stuck at the bottom, we can't expect them to see the whole picture.

How we got to this place is kind of moot, isn't it?  The thing is, how to we get back closer to that ideal, where the system works?

It just seems to me that many of us are focused on the extremes and unwilling to work towards a strong center - to get things back into balance.

Fear is a great motivator.  The wealthy are afraid that the masses might gain power over their wealth.  This fear is encouraged by the media, the right wing media in particular.  Even those with just enough to get by are afraid someone will take that from them (big government) instead of recognizing that most of our comforts (food, water, sewer, roads, schools, hospitals, national guard, civil defense, television, radio, etc.) all include government as a protection, not a thief.

It is the twisting of reality that created a mind set that supports the current inequities.  That twist has destroyed many of the safety measures and is set to take away more so that those few with their own wealth to provide their luxuries may have more and those without will have less.  The pattern has been set because the "Big Lie" has shifted paradigms.  

The only one who needs to fear big government is those who are in truth stealing the economy through subsidies, IRS loopholes, offshore manufacturing and jobs, foreign bank accounts, etc.  They are truly like the star collector in The Little Prince - they are hoarding their cash instead of reinvesting it in the country that benefits their ostentatious lifestyle, their bubble from the masses.

Until campaign reform, IRS reform and a taxing structure that ends inequities favoring the top 1% is in place, the income disparity can only grow.  Since so much of the population is bamboozled by the shell of religion dictating their political views, I don't see much hope.

In this country we don't have a royal court, thus we create our own royalty by investing that need to "look up" in our celebrities.  It's the stuff of dreams and fantasies, apparently a human need.

How often have you walked past a person who has nothing, and pretended you don't see them?
Does that make you better than those at the top who gather wealth? You struggle to make ends meet, yet you do nothing for those who have nothing. There is no difference between you, and the greedy person at the top?