The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central " I am the 1% - Lets talk " - Awesome article

If you go to the places where they got the info and graphs you will notice that the rest of the research shows that since the 80's the income growth was pretty much across board increases. The rich have always been rich that's why we call them rich.

What you seem to propose is Socialism.

That's were we all live in Cotton Candy Land and monkeys wipe our asses.

If research presented by that article to be believed, so is 90%+ of all Americans.

Just because most of us would LIKE for things to be fair doesn't mean that we want the government to come in and take from some to give to others under their definition of what is fair.

Our system isn't perfect, but its the best one ever tried. And, as far as fair goes, our system does a pretty good job of rewarding hard work and risk while providing a comfortable living for folks who work hard and take little, if any, risk and allowing you to survive in, what we call, poverty if you choose not to work or risk anything.

Why are you building "government to come in and take"? It wasn't mentioned in the article I linked nor brought up be me.

What is amazing is that we as society agree that current level of wealth inequality is unacceptable. Better and more affordable education, stronger oversight over crony capitalism, transparency in lobbying and progressive taxation...

Lots of things could and should be done.

My old point still stand (and linked article does a good job highlighting it) - concentration of wealth at the top is detrimental to society. Wealth concentrated in too few hands corrupts the system and promotes even more concentration of wealth.

What are you proposing then?

The voucher system seems to work for schools, but as long as our representatives are being lobbied by the teacher's union, that won't happen. Private schools provide better education for less money per pupil with greater teacher accountability, period. Amazing what can happen when the government isn't involved.

I agree about the crony capitalism, which is bred by big government and murky lobbying tactics. Get rid of the D.C. offices and send all the representatives and senators home. They can debate via telecom. That way they are closer to their constituents for accountability purposes and decentralized to make lobbying more difficult.

We have a progressive tax system. If you think we don't then you've clearly never paid attention to your tax forms.

I think there is agreement that lopsided wealth concentration is not a good thing. In fact I would be the first to say that it is indicative of a society with major underlying issues, and an indicator of potential social unrest.

@sinij :
The differences are what we believe to be the underlying causes and solutions.

Regarding the wealth issue in of itself, and ignoring the other aspects for a second... if I have read your views correctly, you seem to view lopsided wealth as a cause of problems, whereas I see it as a symptom. Which is why I do not particularly think that raising taxes and redistributing money is particularly effective in the long run.

An analogy would be that if we say the country is sick with HIV, lopsided wealth is one of the colds that it catches because the underlying immune system is compromised. Taking some cough medicine (raising taxes and redistributing wealth) might help us feel better temporarily... but does nothing to address the worsening underlying issue. Eventually the various diseases resulting from the underlying condition will get so bad as to no longer be treatable, and the patient will die. Unless of course you identify the underlying source of the problems and prepare effective treatments while the patient still has the strength to survive them.

Basically I just consider the bulk of liberal proposals to be "feel good" solutions, which pursuing would be the equivalent of chasing our tail.

My biggest beef with them, is that almost all pursue action at the federal level. Achieving meaningful reform at the federal is something I consider a literal impossibility if it comes by means of initiating additional actions and/or powers. Because the Federal Govt has almost zero accountability. Federal agents in any dept can basically do almost anything they want, or look the other way as convenient... and with few exceptions nothing will blowback on them.

Many Fed agencies already do not even obey the law, like the TSA ignoring court orders. Madoff didnt get away with his scam because there werent laws against it... the regulators were all either intimidated or bought off. Megabanks launder tens of billions for drug cartels and write off the whole episode with a couple hundred million bucks of fines. Bushes get elected and funnel billions to Haliburtons and other cronies, Obamas get elected and funnel billions to various donors, Kennedys, Gores and etc... One in the name of making the world safer via military, the other in the name of fighting global warming. Its all the same, and none of them get called to account.

People do not even comment on all the smaller businesses that get hosed by the govt. Under Bush I personally know a company that went bankrupt because they had to pay millions of dollars to a crony Bush company that was affiliated with Homeland Security to "clean up" a plant disease that is very common in South America because some made it through customs. ( It was a "biological weapon" hah) Ofc anyone who really wanted to use it to infect our potato crop or something could easily sneak it over (and obviously not report it when routine labwork on your crop detects it...) but sense does not matter to govt... only the dollars.

So, who should watch over the govt? The people? Well it doesnt happen, and cant happen. Never mind the corrupt and collusive media, too much goes on for most people to begin to follow the events... let alone do anything about them. With trillions of dollars at stake (literally) and only two parties to buy off... what hope can there possibly be of ever getting an honest Federal Govt? None, the numbers involved (number of people/time required to pay attention/time available/influence/number of events to watch/etc)quickly show it is utterly and completely impossible. Concentration of power by definition reduces the accountability of those in power.

Dont we have little enough accountability of govt already? Why would we want even less?

When liberals start talking about reducing the power and corruption of the Fed Govt, and implementing solutions at a level of govt that is realistically possible for the electorate to hold accountable in a meaningful way then I will be all ears.

Why is wealth inequality such a big deal? So what if 60 million americans own most of the wealth? 3 million of them pay 40% of the taxes. The lower two and a half quinitiles not only pay no federal taxes, but also receive some sort pf welfare payment!
So this massive transfer of wealth is pissed away year after year. The people who have wealth or are capable of earning it support themselves and half the country.

This class warfare baiting is so cliched its tiresome. There is no way to even out wealth. There will always be inequality. Anyone put in charge of redistribution of wealth will help themselves and their friends to it. Dont marxists ever tire of the same drivel? it seems that people who care about wealth inequality are basically begging. they dont want to work withinthe system to improve their lit but would rather someone take it from a rich guy and hand it over.

next topic please

The problems with this are severalfold:

1- scale. there are 180,000 people employed by LA Unified. 9,500 is like 5% of that.
2- unions. the 9,500 teachers laid off werent the worst ones, but the newest
3- non teachers. in most districts there are more non teachers than teachers, also with unions and collective bargaining rights, and finite resources. add to this the enormous bloat at the california dept of Ed and you have a lot of waste.
4- pensions. thank god stockton was dominoe number one and some sanity was injected into the pension system. cant happen soon enough imo

i say all this as a teacher. my once noble profession has been dragged in the shit and is now viewed by taxpayers as full of greedy, lazy, grasping parasites. our pensions and benefits are too lavish. it cannot be sustained.

if they want to talk about giving back 3 things need to happen:
1- every third non teacher needs to be fired
2- the dept of education needs its budget slashed by 90% or more
3- all non social security systems need to be outlawed. id be happy if social security was too but lets be reasonable

"3- all non social security systems need to be outlawed. id be happy if social security was too but lets be reasonable"

Can you expound upon this one please?

This is very standard argument. Conservatives (not my POV, but you asked me to defend this point) point out that tax outlays are wealth transfer and discourage wealth generation.

Such argument is usually countered by pointing out that for true equality starting point must be the same, that not everyone who falls through the cracks had as fair shot at "making it" as you or me.