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income inequality debate

This is really about racial inequality, but economic inequality plays heavily into these issues. plus I didn't want to post it on the Fascism thread which has just totally spun out of control. Anyway, bottom line is Nate Silver points out that white people in America experience violent crime on a level similar to Finland, while black people experience violent crime on a level more similar to Rwanda. http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/stats-guru-nate-silver-for-black-americans-us-is-about-as-dangerous-as-rwanda/
 
What an amazing economic recovery after 8 years in office. Thanks Obama! 62% of Americans don't even have a thousand dollars in savings.
62%25%20americans%20don%27t%20have%201000%20or%20more%20in%20savings_1001x656.jpg
 
It's the President of the United States fault that people don't save money?

It's also a ridiculous post given today the stock market is at its highest mark ever.

Bob, I respect the vigor of which you post, and appreciate looking at the other side, but a lot of your posts recently really have not made a lot of sense.
 
BobStackFan4Life said:
What an amazing economic recovery after 8 years in office. Thanks Obama! 62% of Americans don't even have a thousand dollars in savings.
62%25%20americans%20don%27t%20have%201000%20or%20more%20in%20savings_1001x656.jpg
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My wife and I do well enough for ourselves, have two cars, house, baby etc. and have zero dollars in a 'savings account' (and I think nomenclature is important, here). why would you save money in an environment with the lowest interest rates in recent history? i blame the Fed and the greedy banking industry.

give me better savings acct rates and i'll think about it.
 
It would be interesting to hear the definition of "savings account". Does a 401K count as that? Most of my money is tied up in a 401K or similar investments. I think I have less than $1,000 in my savings account as well.
 
Deacsfan27 said:
It's the President of the United States fault that people don't save money?

It's also a ridiculous post given today the stock market is at its highest mark ever.

Bob, I respect the vigor of which you post, and appreciate looking at the other side, but a lot of your posts recently really have not made a lot of sense.
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Blame the people who are forced to live day to day in this rigged economy. And you refer to yourself as a "liberal"? Fuck that. Pat yourself on the back for supporting gay rights and BLM but your disdain for democracy and disregard for the working poor are the furthest thing from liberal.
 
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Let me ask you doofus, you think most of the 62% who don't even have $1,000 in savings give a fuck about the stock market being up today? You think they significantly benefit from that?
 
BobStackFan4Life said:
Blame the people who are forced to live day to day in this rigged economy. And you refer to yourself as a "liberal"? Fuck that. Pat yourself on the back for supporting gays rights and BLM but your disdain for democracy and disregard for the working poor are the furthest thing from liberal.
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Your characterizations and character assassinations of me over the past week are completely misguided and out of line.

Show me one post where I have ever shown a "disregard for the working poor"?

It's fine if you disagree with my politics, but it's not worth it to me to engage in a conversation with you if all you are going to do is reply with comments like this.

Read the tone of my post, and then read the tone of yours. Do you think that is a reasonable way to respond if you seriously want to discuss things?
 
I bet the reason they don't even have $1,000 is because they spent it all on a color tv! Way to embrace the rightwing talking points and demonize the non-country club crowd my liberal friend.
 
BobStackFan4Life said:
Let me ask you doofus, you think most of the 62% who don't even have $1,000 in savings give a fuck about the stock market being up today? You think they significantly benefit from that?
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Of course most of them don't care about that.

Give me another metric that the POTUS is reasonably responsible for (or can even be attributed to) as it pertains to the economy and how we judge it by? Job creation, employment rates, what else?
 
Doofus, this is what you said:
It's the President of the United States fault that people don't save money?
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That is an incredibly ignorant thing to say. You in effect are blaming the victims of this economy for their situation. You don't realize how many people can have a job and still be just one bill away from being homeless.
 
BobStackFan4Life said:
Doofus, this is what you said:

That is an incredibly ignorant thing to say. You in effect are blaming the victims of this economy for their situation. You don't realize how many people can have a job and still be just one bill away from being homeless.
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I think the amount of people that have $1,000 in their savings account is very far down on the list of things we should look at the POTUS being directly responsible for. That's why I asked for other metrics by which to measure the economy by.

Not to mention I don't even know what "savings account" means in that particular graph. Does it mean they don't have $1K of emergency funds? Easily accessible money? Liquidated assets? Net Worth?
 
So a trend that spans decades is obamas fault, seems about right. I'm sure the 49% of seniors over the age of 65 that have 0 savings 8 years ago were like fuck Obama is in office better get rid of all my money.
 
P4nthers11 said:
The very premise of that article doesn't make sense:

"This analysis tests the often-made argument that immigrants do only jobs Americans don't want. If the argument is correct, there should be occupations comprised entirely or almost entirely of immigrants (legal and illegal)."
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Did you read the article or just a few sentences? The title is "Are There Really Jobs Americans Won’t Do?", which is a common argument made by the pro-immigrant crowd. The data clearly shows that no, there are not jobs Americans won't do, and in fact almost all jobs have a workforce where the majority of employees are native born. Therefore, it is false to say there are jobs that Americans won't do. How does this not make sense to you?
 
I read the entire article. I agree that the thesis is weak. The number of immigrants in any given job classification has a number of compounding variables other than "will Americans do this job". The #1 compounding variable is "will Americans do this job for the amount that American employers are willing to pay." There is no job Americans won't do if the pay offered is high enough. Employers often prefer to pay immigrants lower wages than Americans will accept.

Now I understand that cuts both ways, when it comes to policy recommendations. BSF would probably say that the policy answer is to greatly restrict low-skill immigration and guest worker programs, which will theoretically force American employers to pay higher wages to entice native-born workers to work for them. Others might say the policy answer is to improve education levels or somehow promote other jobs that native borns find more appealing. Still others might say the answer is a higher minimum wage for everyone so employers have a harder time undercutting the labor market with immigrants. All of these have knock-on effects, such as making the goods and services currently provided by heavily immigrant workforces more expensive.

There are trade-offs here and the trade-offs are not easy. Take agriculture. Low-wage immigrant labor keeps food prices lower than they otherwise would be. Banning immigrant labor/raising minimum wage = paying substantially more to attract US workers = higher prices for oranges and strawberries etc. Who is hurt the most by that? The wealthy will just keep shopping at Whole Foods. It's the people shopping at Food Lion who are going to be hurt. So maybe more of the native-born poor get jobs, but they also pay more for their groceries. The benefits of such a policy are concentrated on a small number of ag workers, the costs of the policy are spread across the entire bottom 80% of society or so. I'm not making a value judgment one way or another - just pointing out that this is a multidimensional issue, and before you push on one side of the balloon you have to figure out where the other side is going to bulge out.
 
The #1 compounding variable is "will Americans do this job for the amount that American employers are willing to pay."
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So you admit immigration is often about undercutting the wages of native born workers? And you think that is a good thing? Keep in mind, even with the pressure on wages that the presence of of immigrants provides, almost all occupations are still majority native born. One of the things the proponents of immigration either can't comprehend or don't care about is that the people who are most hurt by these lost wages/benefits tend to be those who can least afford it- the working poor. There is no pressure on many employers to improve the conditions of these workers, because finding a replacement is never difficult given the number of low skilled immigrants we take in.
 
BobStackFan4Life said:
So you admit immigration is often about undercutting the wages of native born workers? And you think that is a good thing? Keep in mind, even with the pressure on wages that the presence of of immigrants provides, almost all occupations are still majority native born. One of the things the proponents of immigration either can't comprehend or don't care about is that the people who are most hurt by these lost wages/benefits tend to be those who can least afford it- the working poor. There is no pressure on many employers to improve the conditions of these workers, because finding a replacement is never difficult given the number of low skilled immigrants we take in.
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Oooh you got me! I admit it!

Obviously that's so, and I said so above. Why did you feel the need to play a completely gratuitous gotcha card?

Aside from that - sure, poor unskilled people are often disproportionately impacted by immigration. They are also disproportionately impacted by technology - the number of hands required to run a farm now is a small fraction of what it was 50 years ago, due to technology. But those populations also benefit from immigration and technology, by paying less for food and clothing than they would otherwise pay. It's not a one-dimensional issue. Again with the agricultural example - there are maybe 2,000,000 immigrant farmworkers in the US, legal and illegal. If we immediately kicked them all out and farmers had to pay Americans what it would take to get them to work in the fields, theoretically 2,000,000 Americans would get part-time and full-time jobs, but all 330,000,000 Americans would pay more for their food - a cost which impacts poor Americans much more than it impacts wealthy Americans, because they pay a much higher percentage of their income for food. Again, it's easy to say that one solution or another is a silver bullet, but you have to understand the impact those bullets have throughout the economy.
 
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