Limbaugh: Pope is a Marxist

I know the ****ing difference, I clearly.....nevermind, screw the semantics. Are you arguing that tax rates are higher now than in 1980 or prior?

 

Now I really am going to bed. Long drive staring me in the face. And early.

 

Did you read the article that you posted? He goes from Wage Gap to "equality of opportunity". The two are not necessarily linked.

 

Didn't Obama win a Nobel prize?

 

I thought that we were discussing Wage Gap. The economist is discussing Wealth Gap and says - His book, "The Price of Inequality," illustrates how the American economy has been engineered to benefit a few while taking from everyone else --

Doesn't that assume that money/wealth is finite?

 

To be more precise, wouldn't it be more like the universe- finite but ever expanding?

 

The biggest fallacy in wealth and income is that its a zero sum game, and that economic activity equals wealth.

If Jay breaks my window, and I go and by a new one. Wealth hasn't been created.

Also we tend to over-look the wealth in our lives. Air-conditioner, transportation, cheap made to fit clothing, a variety of foods and spices, refrigeration, on demand entertainment, and huge advances in personal health. I mean hell. I have a device in my pocket that is more powerful than the computer used to send our people to the moon.

 

I agree that wealth is relative.

 

You don't get it. If the rich have more the middle class don't have less. Therefore the gap between the two means nothing. More income is good for the economy no matter where it goes.

 

For the 1 per centers? Absolutely

 

Wealth is stored in Financial Institutions. Financial institutions loan it for people to purchase consumer goods (which increases jobs), send their children to college and universities, start a business, etc.

Sounds like a big problem.

 

Basic economic theory suggests that higher consumer spending (I.e what the poor spend most of their income on) benefits the economy short term, while savings and investment benefit the economy long term. People have tried to calculate that effect (rather bs things called multiplier effects) and investment has a much higher multiplier effect than consumer spending. I'm not sure I buy that savings have a higher multiplier effect which the numbers say, but either way at worst money going to the poor or rich have a similar effect on the economy.

 

Flat wages + rising prices = less doesn't it? At least in terms of purchasing power?

Let me say again, I'm not trying to frame this in terms of class warfare. At all. The rich will get richer if the middle class buys more of their products. I'm not arguing that there should be no rich people. That's stupid. I'm not arguing that worker's pay be almost as much as a CEO's. I'm saying that the rich will benefit even more when they are selling more of their products. Is that really that crazy of an idea? Because it seems perfectly rational to me.

 

It's only the last say 10 years that wages haven't gone up with inflation. Before that it's the inflation adjusted wage that has been flat. But even if wages were down across the board it still doesn't make any sense that wage gaps are the problem. Surely wages dropping are a problem, but those are an effect of a bad economy, not the cause.

 

Perhaps we're not as far apart as we first thought.

Now that I'm awake, let me briefly explain the context of the uneven distribution of income as a factor that helped bring on the Depression was taught to me:

It was the lack of buying power that resulted in the buildup of unsold goods. You don't sell, you don't make money. Now, VolDad has discussed borrowing. Lots of folks were forced to borrow beyond their means to repay which hastened a banking crisis. The excrement hit the rotating cooling unit when banks no longer had money to lend & couldn't collect what they were owed.

Is that really that far out there?

 

Good fro the economy? Here I thought we were talking about people.

 

How are they not strongly correlated with strong causal influences? I mean, economists think they are. So I am curious as to your perspective.

 

Based upon what? The info I've found tells otherwise.

http://qz.com/74271/income-tax-rates-since-1913/

You can click on the different levels in the chart area.

If you have some evidence to the contrary, I'm all ears.

 

Those are marginal tax rates. That doesn't include deductions. The ultra rich in the late 70s and early 80s were investing in tax shelters. These shelters had 3X deductions. Meaning if I invested $10K in them, I got a $30K write off of my taxes. Also the rich didn't really invest in the stock market during that time. Why? Because tax free bonds were yielding 10%. why invest in a market that had been flat to down for 15 years and pay taxes on it when you can earn 10% tax free? If the 1%ers got a huge tax cut under Reagan as the liberal mantra always says where is the huge drop in tax receipts in the early 80s?

 

wages dropped across the board in the great depression. rich people lost a larger percentage of their net worth than the middle class (same is true for 2007 btw). you said one of the causes of the great depression was the income gap and that is not even remotely true. yes when the great depression got in full swing and wages dropped that further torpedoed the economy. but that wasn't your argument.