How do we lessen the gap between rich and poor?

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American equality? That's rich

BY LENORE SKENAZY

New York Daily News

(KRT) - America is the land of opportunity. Granted. But the opportunity for what?

Well, if you're rich, there's a whole lot of opportunity to stay rich. And if you're poor, you have plenty of opportunity to pass that hard life on to your kids. That's because, among the top 11 developed countries - France, Germany, Japan, etc. - America now ranks as the most unequal, in terms of wealth. In jolly old class-stratified England, for example, the top 1 percent of Brits own 18 percent of the wealth. In America that top percent owns a whopping 33 percent.

Even worse than this income disparity is that the American dream is dying: Our country is now second to last (thank goodness for Canada) in terms of its poor people ever escaping from poverty.

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/8693386.htm

My question is this. Is there any way to stop this trend?

Due to a more global economy, companies are having to compete much more. While they try cost-cutting measures such as longer work weeks, cheaper benefits, less pay, and less vacation time for their workers, the CEO's salaries just keep rising.

What can be done?

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Oh great, more Canada bashing. Wink

How about...stop being so damn greedy you rich CEO bastards? How about, invest in your workforce, and make them feel appreciated? You may find that efficiency and morale will improve dramatically, resulting in a lower bottom line. The money you spend on team-building might be put to better use if the workers felt like they had some value. How about reforming the welfare system? I dunno, the list goes on...

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> I am going to get slack for this <
Cool

I hate it when the government ( america's ) reforms welfare. For some reason.. the only laws that usually stick when it comes to welfare come from the extremely republican side of our country. The ones who think there should not be any welfare and that even the most crippled of us should work for money. Good idea..having everyone working for thier money. But with this country as it is I PERSONALLY THINK that there is absolutly no way to get the poor out of the 'pot' so to speak. Everything here is about bigger , better and faster. There for we will eliminate anything that stands in the way of 'progress' if it slows things down even one tenth of a second. Waiting for people to get educated / training new people on the job etc.. hinder speed . Replacing computers and other slight forms of AI make for the better faster answer our businesses are looking for today. Everything we do is about the here and now and how much I can make today so i dont have to work tomorrow. Never is it about providing or assisting anyone else. Americans i think are pretty arrogant and it shows in our poverty levels. Shoot me if you will. it is my opinion and I own it. Granted.. I like living in this country.. and I like alot of the people I meet.. but im not surprised it is as low as it is on the poverty scale. <<< putting up my bullet proof glass >>> Im ready ...shoot me. hehe

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Well, you won't get any grief from me, shewolfnm!

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Sounds like you need a latter day Robin Hood & a whole bunch of guys in green tights & maybe the Hole in the Wall Gang & the Magnificent 7 so you can even things up a little.

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I can see it now... a whole bunch of men in green tights sweeping america simultaniously singing YMCA while throwing chocolate gold pieces to the homeless .
Holy shi*...... HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA Laughing

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yeah & you can trade the chocolate gold pieces for hard tack & beef jerky & a bottle of red eye.
Or Mac D burger and a cactus milk shake. Lovely

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That's a quaint image of America, oldandknew. Would that it actually was that colorful. The cactus milk shake sounds refreshing!

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Hi D'art. -------- yeah we Brits can do quaint with our eyes closed. But you guys are learning fast.
Just been watching a Western fable,,,,,, Billy the Kid movie with Khris Khristopherson & James Coburn. Full of phun till the last colorfull scene

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That's probably true about keeping the eyes closed. The US foreign policy is working on that basis at the moment. How well, however, is open to argument!

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Comes the revolution we will all eat borsht. Laughing

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shewolfnm wrote:

> I am going to get slack for this <
I hate it when the government ( america's ) reforms welfare. For some reason.. the only laws that usually stick when it comes to welfare come from the extremely republican side of our country. The ones who think there should not be any welfare and that even the most crippled of us should work for money. Good idea..having everyone working for thier money. But with this country as it is I PERSONALLY THINK that there is absolutly no way to get the poor out of the 'pot' so to speak. Everything here is about bigger , better and faster. There for we will eliminate anything that stands in the way of 'progress' if it slows things down even one tenth of a second. Waiting for people to get educated / training new people on the job etc.. hinder speed . Replacing computers and other slight forms of AI make for the better faster answer our businesses are looking for today. Everything we do is about the here and now and how much I can make today so i dont have to work tomorrow. Never is it about providing or assisting anyone else. Americans i think are pretty arrogant and it shows in our poverty levels. Shoot me if you will. it is my opinion and I own it. Granted.. I like living in this country.. and I like alot of the people I meet.. but im not surprised it is as low as it is on the poverty scale. <<< putting up my bullet proof glass >>> Im ready ...shoot me. hehe

One major factor in being a leader in both politics and business is having an instinct about people. Unfortunately, it seems that America has neither at the moment.

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Maybe the gold chocolate will be the new S&H stamps.... the more you have the closer you get to a new bottle of Maddog 20/20 !! hahaha

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We're all bad monkeys. Eventually we'll die out and leave the roaches in peace.

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Shewolfnm, I used to think that Americans were selfish, too... but recently I started volunteering my time to help the county animal shelter, and I've found a LOT of people who volunteer, donate money and supplies, and the people who actually work there do so for a very small salary.

I'm sure that if you volunteer somewhere, anywhere, you will find that there are a lot of people who DO care. I don't think its enough people, but its more than I thought originally.

I don't think welfare helps people out of poverty. It seems to keep people in poverty. There are some changes I would make to help motivate people into working harder at ligitimate jobs...

* Make drugs legal, so selling them wouldn't be so profitable. That way the drug dealers on welfare would have to get a real job... maybe even get educated.

* Put more emphasis on primary and secondary education, so children are able to survive college, should they happen to want to go and improve the quality of their life.

I could go on, but I don't want to lose readers.

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Ah Cav --------- we can get an instinct about our neighbors & come out on the good side, cos we probably both like the same things. But what about the aliens ? Instincts don't often work in The Lands Of Shifting Sand. The Aliens often not only hate our guts but wanna take all our Good Stuff & Our Women and Our Jobs & totaly emasculate us.
There are a few camel jockeys who have an eye on the White House

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After WW2 we in the US enjoyed an era of prosperity and built a middle class the likes of which had never been seen before. Why because all the chips were in our favor. Today that advantage is gone and with it comes an erosion of that middle class. We must compete on a global basis. Based on our negative balance of payments and the flight of industry we are not doing too well. The gap I fear will only get worse. That's capitalism.

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I think CEO's of big companies should have caps put on the amount of salary and stock options they can have, unless, of course, it is a privately owned company. That might help a little bit. At the very least it would make me less likely to want to vomit when I get e-mails from the CEO of my company on the state of the business.

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I just heard a radio segment about this topic. The disparity between rich and poor in this country is greater than it has been in 100 years.

hmmm, npr or wbur.... I can't remember.

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An interesting point from the original article:

Quote:

Wages for the average stiff? From 1981 through 1995, they fell by 5 percent, in real terms. The richest 1 percent of Americans saw their incomes soar by 78 percent.

Unlike the British and most other Europeans that "richest 1%" changed hands several dozen times from 1980 to 2000. The Boston Globe ran a story on this phenomena a week ago Sunday. The people in that top 1% turns over constantly here in the US where in Europe it is stagnant.

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How do we lessen the gap between rich and poor?

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