@Blickers,
Quote:Yes, Baldimo, in a year-to-year comparison, the growth or decline in the number of people in the top 1% will exactly match the growth or decline in the number of people in the 99%, and any fifth grader with a passing grade in math knows it. Let's just suppose between year A year B the number of people in the top 1% grew 25%. You have my word, the number of people in the bottom 99% grew by 25% as well. Bank on it. They teach this stuff in middle school.
Do you have any actual proof to back that up? I wonder what the actual break down is of people in each of the tax brackets.
https://taxfoundation.org/how-many-taxpayers-fall-each-income-tax-bracket/
I can't find anything back to 1980. Since you seem to think they teach such things about population by tax bracket, maybe you fan find your proof of equal growth.
Quote:Nothing, as long as both the wealthy and not so wealthy keep improving their financial position.
I'm not sure how the wealthy are keeping this from happening. Unless you think raising the min wage is going to solve this issue, and I don't think it will.
Quote:If done right, this system has the potential to produce an ever increasing economy where the vast majority of people are improving their standard of living most of the time.
This is exactly the type of economy we have. The problem for the last several years has been lack of growth, below 2% on average for most of Obama's administration, not including 2008 and 2009. The slowest recovery in the history of the US economy, we will see what happens with the economy in the next couple of years.
Quote:However, when things go wrong and most people do NOT experience an increase in their standard of living for a long time while the top 1% takes it all, then all sorts of things can go wrong.
There you go again with the the nonsense. The 1%f isn't some shady group of people meeting in a dark room. If they are, they are all DNC supporters. Have you seen the top 10 richest people list? It's filled with DNC supporters, these people at the very top of the 1% are your people! The founders of Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook are all lefties! Explain that **** to me.
Quote:For one thing, when those at the top 1% start not just owning much more than the average worker and start owning just about all the assets of the economy that exist,
Let me stop you right there. There is no way in any economy that has freedom where this will not happen. There is no way the owner and founder of Amazon should own about as much of the economy as the person working in an Amazon warehouse, or even a person who works as a computer programmer for their website. If you think they should, then there really isn't anything to debate.
Quote: (which is where we are headed in the next forty years), then vast majority of people begin to lose political power as well.
Unless they take away the ability to vote in elections, then I don't see this happening. It's one of the reasons I support a strong third party and I stopped supporting the major parties several years ago. Remember it was Hillary and the DNC who rigged the primaries so she would win. Who supports the DNC? A majority of the people on the Top 10 Wealthiest people in the world. Don't look to Hollywood for help either, it seems the DNC deepest pockets in Hollywood have had their hands in more than just the political cookie jar.
Quote:The 99% gets reduced to serfdom, as those who own all the assets and have virtually all the money will call all the shots with no consideration given to the now-powerless 99%.
Support a strong 3rd party to keep the power defused down to the people instead of the hands of the 3 big parties who are the ones being bought off.
I see what your saying but unless the rich somehow come up with a way of stopping people from starting a business, then all you are auguring with is fear mongering against the wealthy. It's pathetic class warfare and nothing more.
Quote:Reagan kicked off the vast concentration of wealth in the hands of the top 1%, that's what his economic program did. Again, I post the chart. Since 1980, when Reagan got elected, the percentage of the country's wealth the top 1% owns has gone from 24% to 43%-damn near a fifth of the wealth got transferred to the 1% from the 99%. You call this an economic system in good shape? This is an economic system headed towards totalitarianism, as the 99% lose all economic power, soon to be followed by their loss of all political power.
You uterlly and completly fail to take into effect how our way of life has changed since the 1980's. The people who have become wealthy in the last 40 years have do by taking advantage of advancements in technology which has moved us forward. Did you take advantage of the budding internet in the mid 1990's? Well thousands of people did, and they move from one income bracket to another have continued to climb. How many others have taken advantage of the "new" economy and developed skills to be successful? The internet isn't new and the growth that is still possible is available to those who take the chances. I for one was one of those people. In the late 90's I was a carpenter and I took the change and went to a tech school to learn about computers and networks, Nov 99'- Jun 2000. Does that time frame ring a bell?
Quote:Because I want to take a look at the economy as a whole and not just the bits and pieces you and Rush want us to look at it.
Please, don't link me to Rush, I gave you my source for the quote. You don't want to look at the whole econoomy, you want to look at 2 pieces, the 1% and everyone else.
Quote:If America is to be the land of opportunity, we take a look at the economy as a whole, not just this part of that part. The 1% since Reagan has started taking all the wealth in the country with no end in sight. If you think democracy and freedom can survive with only 1% of the people owning virtually all the economic assets of a country, you are delusional. When the 99% loses economic power like they are, they are losing political power as well. Only a fool couldn't see that.
The 1% aren't taking anything and your characterization of it is more BS. You utterly fail to say how they have "taken" anything from anyone, you just point to 2 data points and the whole economy. You won't stop to think that some people just don't take the steps they need to be successful and grab a slice of the pie. People would be much better off getting degree's in some form of Engineering than any sort of Minority or Gender studies.
Quote:One look at the chart above proves beyond all doubt that the economic system is being fixed, by means of taxation and other methods, so that the already wealthy become even more wealthy fast, fast, fast. And the 99% non-wealthy get an ever smaller slice of the economic pie. And you think that's good.
Your chart shows something but it doesn't draw the conclusions you think it should. I see an era of technology and advancement taking off and people who were not wealthy before taking advantage of that era and earning the benefits. Taxation has nothing to do with how poor someone else is. If you think allowing Jeff Bezos to keep more of his money is preventing someone else from getting money then you really have no idea how the economy works or how business works. Taking an additional billion dollars from him will not do anything to make some poor person in Georgia or Colorado wealthier. Using that money towards the education of others will do nothing to make them wealthier if they waste that education on something that isn't going to earn them more of the pie. Do you really think someone who received a degree in Sociology is ever going to have any measure of wealth?
Quote:So because the wealthy had economically upwardly mobile ancestors we should sit back and watch 1% take all the remaining assets in the country over the next forty years, thereby reducing 99% of the country to serfdom?
What the **** does that even mean? A majority of the wealthiest people on that top 10 list are self-made people, I don't recall hearing that any of them came from wealthy parents. This is the problem with this entire argument of yours, you refuse to admit that the people in the 1% actually earned what they have. You think it was taken by hook or crook and that is your entire complaint and basis of your argument. Why don't you just out and honestly say what you want, you want Communism, you don't want the owners of companies to own the business, you want the "workers", which should translate to the govt, to own these business's so that the govt can "divide" up the wealth... "make it equal for everyone". Admit that is the plan. Just about everything you have said is right out of Marx playbook, you sound just like him. How many times have you read his book?
Quote:I have no problem with the 1% making more money than me, in fact much more money.
Yes you do. Don't play like you don't think it's fair. I'm going to guess that you started a business or 2 in the past and weren't successful, those ventures folded and left you with a bad taste in your mouth. You resent those who have done will, your tax bracket divide envy says it all.
Quote:What I am concerned with is that for the history of this nation, the 1% had a certain share of the total wealth of the country, but the 99% had a much larger share and with the growing economy that translated into an almost constantly rising standard of living for most Americans. That is what an economy should look like. But since Reagan got elected, the tax code and quite a lot of other things have been changed to encourage the already wealthy to enrich their holdings of the national wealth to an enormous amount. And since economic power largely affects political power, as the 1% take over 99% of the wealth of the country, the bottom 99% of the country gets reduced to virtual serfdom. There is no other way.
Spoken again in the true words of Marx. You have already exposed your hate and envy of those who have more than you. The rest of what you are expressing is non-sense and should be ignored as such. You don't show any understanding of how the economy has works or how business works and how people have the ability to move through the tax brackets. You seem to think the 1% are a static group of people who are keeping everyone else out while taking, not earning but taking, what should belong to everyone else.
