Wealthy people take almost all of the national income. So why are we only discussing income inequality between genders and races?
Divvying Up the 1%
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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1) The cartoon doesn’t load.
2) Quote from Sanders’s Labot Day message: tinyurl.com/q4vyhx2
“Almost all new income and wealth is going to the people on top, while millions of Americans work longer hours for lower wages. In fact, wages actually fell for 90 percent of Americans between 2009 and 2012, even as they rose for the top 10 percent. While we have seen in recent years a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires, 51 percent of African American youth are now unemployed or underemployed, and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth.”
This posting links to #3, below, an online position paper
3)) Income & Wealth Inequality: tinyurl.com/njqgg67
Because we’re not all Communists?
FB,
You aren’t addressing the question. You’re trying to be glib. (And not being very good at it.) What Ted is asking is why we have lots of talk-talk about how women make less than men and how blacks make less than white, but we never have anything even remotely like the same level of discussion about why there is almost no mobility between economic classes. LOOK IT UP: it is now an almost certain outcome that the economic class you are born into will be the one you die in, unless you drop even lower.
The debate is about why people USED TO BE able to earn a comfortable living in the middle class but no longer can. Housing prices have gone into orbit. College tuition as well. The two strongest predictors of your life: home ownership and a higher-level degree are either unattainable or irrelevant.
Why does factory owner make $14 million a year in salary while the workers get minimum wage and are terminated if they whisper “union”? Don’t read “Communism” off a bumper sticker and think you’ve answered.
You know full well that capitalism is supposed to create wealth for all who earn. Right there in the cartoon is the point that it is historically abnormal for the elite to make gains so out of proportion with the rest of us.
Wealth inequality is best explained by: central banking and fiat monetary policy. It is not a necessary feature of capitalism. It is unsustainable. Inflation cannot continue in perpetuity. We are all being robbed blind by BANKS and the federal government. Lefties don’t talk about this. Their solutions are all band-aids or worse. I can only guess as to why: they like so much government economic interference, they don’t understand, or they serve our masters. It’s the main reason I’m libertarian. They’re the only ones who get that the FED is the single biggest disaster that ever befell our nation.
Suggested reading: “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith.
Not only is income inequality a central feature of capitalism, it’s a prerequisite. It’s been that way since long before the advent of the Fed.
Smith’s answer was government oversight and progressive taxation. (“regulation” and “tax the rich”)
You seem to believe one must agree with every idea of Adam Smith to be a capitalist. I have ABSOLUTELY no problem with income inequality. I have a problem with a rigged system. I have a problem with highway robbery. The only attainable equality is that before the law. A bank is allowed to counterfeit money. You and I are not. That is not legal equality.
Further, you know full well (since it is what we are addressing) that we have far greater economic inequality than in the past. What has changed? Has this come about through the free market? Hardly! We have more government interference, size, spending, and debt than ever. The elite keeps us down through LAWS. Not the free market. Why is this so hard to see?
Some economic inequality is not only inevitable but desirable. The problem we face today is that it is hardly in any way based upon MERIT.
And if you want to get really historical and technical (which you seem to), liberals were once in favor of FREE markets. Classical (read: real) liberals are capitalists.
Good point, CrazyH ; to travesty a well-known song : «Everybody talkin’ ’bout A Smith ain’t read him»….
But then again, Smith was a moral philosopher, not a bean counter…. 😉
Henri
@mhenriday
Thanks. Smith was a liberal and had a deeply rooted distrust of capitalists. He wasn’t espousing a philosophy so much as describing the world as he saw it.
The wrongnuts like to talk about his work, but don’t really want you to read it. Besides progressive taxation and regulation, he also advised governments to NOT hoard gold.
He correctly divined that gold is only worth that which you can trade it for – it has very little intrinsic value. Then it only took 200 years for Nixon to take us off the gold standard.
I now see my wording was unclear in my first comment. I meant that central banking and fiat money are not a necessary component of capitalism. I did not mean wealth inequality. Of course that is part and parcel of capitalism. Although the massive inequality we know today is not.
And to answer your rhetorical question, Ted, it’s because of Cultural Marxism, which is interested in fomenting division among ordinary people along racial and gender lines. You’re one of the few on the Left who usually sees past this to the big issues fortunately.
Those divisions already exist. Ted didn’t make those percentages up. Raising awareness of inequality is not the same as creating or inventing it.
«So why are we only discussing income inequality between genders and races?» Perhaps, Ted, because those who accumulated 99 % of those gains own and control the media on which such questions are discussed ? «Jack Heart» claims above this glaring discrepancy in wealth gains is «not a necessary feature of capitalism» and it may well be possible to define some sort of theoretical «capitalism» in which that proposition would hold true. But as we see, it certainly isn’t valid for «actually existing capitalism», something which was recognised as early as the middle and latter part of the 19th century….
Henri
It takes money to make money. Rich folks have more disposable income – they are in a better position to make more money.
Below a certain level, a person does not have anything to invest: he’s locked out of the American dream.
“It takes money to make money.”
*
Exactly!
You knead dough to make bread.
1. The tribalism always serves the interests of the 1%. How can the 99% unite when it’s easier to blame white people or welfare queens or illegal immigrants when true income inequality is the issue?
2. The wage gap is bad analysis leading to a poor conclusion. When the median man makes 25% more tHan the median woman, that doesn’t mean every workplace has men earning 25% more than a woman with similar qualifications and effort. The two aren’t related.
3. True income inequality is disconnecting effort and reward. A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.