Wall Street Protests

[SamIam]

Originally Posted by classicman

Easy Sam ...
I just thought his was an interesting tale. Primarily BECAUSE of when he went to school. (president at the time irrelevant)

I can associate with him on a couple things. I too went back to school that year and graduated in 2000 with 2 degrees. I worked 3 jobs to support my family and pay my own way at the time. Yet here I sit day after day looking for a real job and trying to figure out wtf I did wrong.


ETA - thanks for helping to support me Mr. noideawhoyouare.

That's nice that you found a pic of someone who could have been in your graduating class. But the man in the pic HAS a job and calls those who DON'T have a job in these difficult times worthless blood suckers he resents having to support. I'm supposed to give up MY social security and MY medical care for this spiteful jerk? I don't think so. I have paid into social security faithfully since the age of 16, and I still pay into it now. I worked to get through college - BA in Biology from the University of Colorado, then an MA in Library and Information Science from the University of Denver. Not only did I work, I got scholarships, and my parents helped when they could.

After I got my degrees, I worked for another 30 years in my profession, and I put aside money for my retirement, had IRA's, savings, the whole nine yards. Then I got sick. No one could figure out what was wrong, and I got sicker. I eventually was forced to quit my fairly high paying job. I used up all my reserves on medical expenses and living expenses until I was left with nothing but a small disability check.

Now the Republican Party wants to take that, too, along with my medicaid and my housing assistance. They don't just want to put the old girl to pasture, they want to send her to the glue factory. Me and thousands if not millions like me. Mad? Mad doesn't even begin to describe my feelings.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by SamIam

But the man in the pic HAS a job and calls those who DON'T have a job in these difficult times worthless blood suckers he resents having to support.

referring to me.

I'm supposed to give up MY social security and MY medical care for this spiteful jerk? I don't think so.

Where did you get that opinion? Did I lead you too think that was how I felt somehow? (confused)

Me and thousands if not millions like me. Mad? Mad doesn't even begin to describe my feelings.

I gathered that long ago. You must have me confused with someone else. I am not exactly the happy guy right now either.

[infinite monkey]

..

[TheMercenary]

That picture rocks....

[SamIam]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

That picture rocks....

Oh, you graduated from that same institution of higher learning which discourages critical thinking, too? That explains much.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by SamIam

Oh, you graduated from that same institution of higher learning which discourages critical thinking, too? That explains much.

No, but thanks for the pic!

[SamIam]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

No, but thanks for the pic!

While that pic was interesting, I cannot claim responsibility for it. Classic is the one who first posted it.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I'm saying that I think the original graph producers decided on households because it shows a wider disparity. This stuff is hard for us laymen to figure.

Ok. I think the original graph producers decided on households and not per capita because that's how income taxes are filed, how the data's collected. Not to show a greater disparity, but neither of us is one of the graph producers nor likely to meet them and ask them, so the point's rather moot.

As for what's hard for us laymen to figure .... figuring the intentions of absent and anonymous graph producers is hard, I agree. Figuring the arithmetic behind such illustrations is not as hard. For example, the arithmetic behind your per capita expansion of the income figures still demonstrates the extremely disproportionate distribution of income. Let's take the values in your chart. Here is what the per capita income numbers work out to:

              Average Per Capita Income by Income Quartile 2010

Lowest fifth  Second fifth   Middle fifth   Fourth fifth   Highest fifth 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
   $4,634       $25,636        $38,224        $46,494        $86,108

This breakout *STILL* shows an extreme disparity. It is the magnitude of this disparity that I believe is both a cause and a symptom of the serious trouble in our society. You used the phrase "greater disparity", and I ask you, does this per capita perspective show greater or less disparity? Of course it depends on what you choose as your measure.

Actual dollars is a measure we could agree on, using these figures. By this measure, each of the people in a given household, on average, has this amount of money. At the top there, each member of the household has $86k to spend. That's a lot of coin. At the other end of the scale, just one-eighteenth of that amount. Not a lot of coin. A delta of about 18 times. So when you talk about how much the big fish lose when the line on the graph tips down, like you do in your subsequent post, I would point out that though their dollar loss is great, it is on par with the ENTIRE annual income for the bottom quintile in many cases. So saying "I lost 5% or 10%" gives a comparative value. Saying "I lost $10,000 or I lost $500"... how does that inform the reader? Those are similar percentages, but the impact on the lives of the losers is not the same.

liars figure and figures lie... cute.

But I think a far more important question to ask and answer is about the lowest two quintiles. Forty percent of our population is living on these kinds of dollars. Your table doesn't say gross or net income, even if we take the most favorable position, net income, that's not a lot of money for almost half the population. Half the consumers for the goods and services produced in our economy have just this small amount of money to spend. The more they have the more they'll spend.

TWO THINGS

OUR REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT REPRESENT THESE PEOPLE. Do you see forty percent of our Congress among this economic demographic? Of course not. Do you see anything close to forty percent of our elected representatives talking about this large chunk of the electorate? No. Do you see or hear anything like forty percent of our legislation focused on the segment of our population with such limited means? No way. How is this "representative"? It's not.

IT IS ENTIRELY IN OUR SELF INTEREST, ALL OF US, TO RAISE THE STANDARD OF LIVING FOR OUR FELLOW CITIZENS AT THIS END OF THE SCALE, THE "LESS FORTUNATE". It costs a certain amount to live. That's what we all spend our first dollar on. And our second dollar. And the next several thousand dollars. That is direct consumption all of us make and spend. But for lots of folks, especially at this lower end, the have no more to spend. Isn't that what our economy needs? More spending? Then we should work to get more money into the hands of the poorest among us.

If you're making $4,600 a year, you spend it all, no doubt. If you make $86,000, maybe you spend it all, maybe you save some. Don't we want more people spending more money, or even saving some? Then these are the people who are most likely to spend whatever increase they see.

How do we measure what's valuable, what's important, what is the minimum needed to live? That number will not be zero. That cost will be borne by someone, even if the person who's incurring the costs has NO money. Where will he eat? Jail? Under a bridge? At a shelter? We don't just let people shrivel up and die. We do, some of us, shoo them away to become someone else's "problem", someone else's cost. I don't live in an America where that's done, where that's right. You don't either.

I don't know how best to do this, there's definitely not just one way, no one thing that will make it happen. BUT. No problem can be solved, and we most definitely have a very big, very important problem here, until that problem is acknowledged. We must all acknowledge that having so many so less fortunate than the most fortunate is a problem we must confront and solve as a nation.

[TheMercenary]

The wealth envy protests are not going to change a dam thing.

Wealth redistribution is a failed plan to fix what ails us.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

The wealth envy protests are not going to change a dam thing.

Wealth redistribution is a failed plan to fix what ails us.

It's not wealth envy.

It's poverty antipathy.

Be wealthy! Yay! But your country, your economy, your society, your future and mine will be better in every way if we're successful in reducing the ranks of the "less fortunate", as UT so delicately puts it.

Is the wealth redistribution from 2007 to 2009 illustrated in UT's chart an example of a failed wealth plan? Is the wealth redistribution from 1986 to 2007 an example of a failed plan?

Wealth redistribution... It's reviled as "wealth redistribution" when a person's relative share goes down; it's hailed as "upward mobility" when a person's relative share goes up. More hypocrisy.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by BigV

More hypocrisy.

Absolutely, as long as I don't have to pay for it I don't care how much it costs, tax the shit out of them! Just get me my free stuff!

[DanaC]

How is it a failed plan?

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by DanaC

How is it a failed plan?

Even if you confiscate all the money from the top 1% it will not pay for the spending that has happened since Obama took office. We have become an entitlement society. Everyone wants the federal government to provide everything for them, free healthcare, free education, free, free, free. As long as someone else pays for it. But when you talk about a consumption tax or a tax where everyone pays into it then you get the whine about making someone else to pay. Yea, lets get the 53% who already pay the most pay more, just don't take it out of my pocket. These protests are becoming more comical by the day with some knew rant or some group wanting more...

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Even if you confiscate all the money from the top 1% it will not pay for the spending that has happened since Obama took office. We have become an entitlement society. Everyone wants the federal government to provide everything for them, free healthcare, free education, free, free, free. As long as someone else pays for it. But when you talk about a consumption tax or a tax where everyone pays into it then you get the whine about making someone else to pay. Yea, lets get the 53% who already pay the most pay more, just don't take it out of my pocket. These protests are becoming more comical by the day with some knew rant or some group wanting more...

But you don't have all that stuff for free. And the wealthy haven;t been subjected to higher taxes. What redistribution of wealth has occurred in the last ten years has done so in the other direction. What the protestors are seeking hasn't been tried in America for a very long time, therefore it isn't a 'failed' anything. It's a hypothetical maybe.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by DanaC

But you don't have all that stuff for free. And the wealthy haven;t been subjected to higher taxes. What redistribution of wealth has occurred in the last ten years has done so in the other direction. What the protestors are seeking hasn't been tried in America for a very long time, therefore it isn't a 'failed' anything. It's a hypothetical maybe.

The wealthy pay almost all of the total tax in this country now, federal, state, and local combined.

What are the protesters seeking? There are a hundred answers to that question.