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income inequality debate

... not a single one of you practices this plan you are wishing for others.

Ah, the classic subtle strawman. Pray tell, troll, what is this "plan"? Who is wishing for it exactly?
 
Deacon923 said:
Based on this data, let's find out what you personally believe: what choices are you making for your family?

First of all: none of your damn business.

Second: it doesn't matter, because not all families are like my family. Government policy isn't, or shouldn't be, about requiring everyone to make the same narrow set of lifestyle choices in order to stay out of poverty. It also isn't, or shouldn't be, about punishing people who fail to make the "right" choices, or who make the "right" choices and still end up in a bad situation due to the vicissitudes of life, or who try to make the "right" choices but are restricted from doing so because of structural issues in the economy. It should be about creating the most prosperity for the greatest number of people, to the extent possible without significantly hampering positive economic activity. Where to strike that balance is obviously a legitimate subject of vehement political debate, as it should be.

Third: I don't quote trolls, because I enjoy denying you the dopamine rush of seeing that alert come up on your phone. Have a nice day, troll.
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Maybe it is just me, but I've heard more enthusiastic, confident and secure endorsements of one's policy choices.
 
Lol. The intellectual bankruptcy of your posts is amusing to me. You're like a One America News shill at a press conference.
 
WokeandBroke said:
I don't believe your best argument for these policies is that they were most effective during the second half of the Trump administration.

I do enjoy that you all consider "trolling" to point out that not a single one of you practices this plan you are wishing for others. If only you would preach what you practice.
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1st of all if you go inside the numbers about half of that decrease between 2014 and 2019 occurred between 2014 and 2016. So when Trump took office poverty was at historically low levels and was decreasing massively for the year over year for the couple of years before he became president. There were definitely some aspects of tax reform which helped transfer money to poor people such as the expanded child credit higher standard deduction.

Regarding your 2nd point there's so much nonsense to unpack. 1st of all you continue to conflate the cause-and-effect of poverty. Mean it is wonderful to think that everybody had such resolute moral character that they could maintain an upstanding lifestyle even in the face of poverty but it's much easier said than done when you are shielded or protected from the bad choices in your life. I think we all know that deep down that isn't the case. Secondly is this idea that people who are promoting transfer payments to the poor are promoting that people don't try to work or improve their lives or set up stable family situations. Simply a strawman.
 
Deacon923 said:
... not a single one of you practices this plan you are wishing for others.

Ah, the classic subtle strawman. Pray tell, troll, what is this "plan"? Who is wishing for it exactly?
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At the present time, your party is arguing for the government to continue paying people not to work. If so, where do you steal the temerity to claim you care about income inequality?
 
WokeandBroke said:
At the present time, your party is arguing for the government to continue paying people not to work. If so, where do you steal the temerity to claim you care about income inequality?
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i mean, the government pays farmers to destroy crops all the time.
 
 
... At the present time, your party is arguing for the government to continue paying people not to work. If so, where do you steal the temerity to claim you care about income inequality?

Oh all this bluster about other poster's family choices is coming from the temporary increase in unemployment benefits due to expire in September? I thought you were concerned about an actual problem, my mistake. The Union will be just fine and this little extra help at the tail end of a pandemic is not going to permanently destroy the American work ethic. Contrary to a recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal which actually claimed that would be the case - I read it and lol'd, you obviously read and it and got SUPER CONCERNED.
 
Also I thought the question about why we'd worry about income inequality when median household incomes are rising was actually a decent one. Why should we care if the rich are getting logarithmically richer if the "middle class" median household income is also rising?

Rather than talk about it in macroeconomic terms and think about tax policy or talk about monopoly power and how it affects consumer choice, or even reflect on how real wage growth is flat, and all those sorts of things, I think there are some simple reasons income inequality is still an important thing to be concerned with.

Here are worrying trends: Compare CEO pay growth vs median employee wage growth. Look at labor union participation and the ability to collectively bargain for better wages. Look at how corporations lobby state and federal govt to gig-ify their workforce to not pay them living wages (or in some cases minimum wages) or benefits of any kind. Those three trends in particular will continue to contribute to the gap in income inequity.
 
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TownieDeac said:
In either case, paying people not to work is going to be something we have to reckon with long term regardless of your politics.
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my hope is that a first step is fewer hours of work per capita rather than fewer workers
 
TownieDeac said:
An important contribution from Labor!

We haven't revisited the 5 day, 40 hour workweek in a very long time.
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TownieDeac said:
An important contribution from Labor!

We haven't revisited the 5 day, 40 hour workweek in a very long time.
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thanks union busters

working sucks, even if you like your job -- I don't understand how collective reduction in hours per worker is not universally popular
 
why would i want to work fewer hours when i'm constantly grinding my way to the top
 
WokeandBroke said:
Some of the posters here are WAY ahead of you, boss.
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i don't think there are many time sheet workers here, but revisiting the concept of the working shift for those punching a clock is probably a better consideration than making the federal dole bigger in the long run!
 
TownieDeac said:
Also I thought the question about why we'd worry about income inequality when median household incomes are rising was actually a decent one. Why should we care if the rich are getting logarithmically richer if the "middle class" median household income is also rising?

Rather than talk about it in macroeconomic terms and think about tax policy or talk about monopoly power and how it affects consumer choice, or even reflect on how real wage growth is flat, and all those sorts of things, I think there are some simple reasons income inequality is still an important thing to be concerned with.

Here are worrying trends: Compare CEO pay growth vs median employee wage growth. Look at labor union participation and the ability to collectively bargain for better wages. Look at how corporations lobby state and federal govt to gig-ify their workforce to not pay them living wages (or in some cases minimum wages) or benefits of any kind. Those three trends in particular will continue to contribute to the gap in income inequity.
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It’s a good question but we have to ask if those median household income gains outpace the rising cost of childcare, education, etc.

It’s also a distraction from asking why government takes passive and active roles in helping billionaires hoard wealth vs an active role providing a floor or even better a trampoline for our citizens.

I second Juice’s recommendation and will act accordingly.
 
PhDeac said:
It’s a good question but we have to ask if those median household income gains outpace the rising cost of childcare, education, etc.

It’s also a distraction from asking why government takes passive and active roles in helping billionaires hoard wealth vs an active role providing a floor or even better a trampoline for our citizens.

I second Juice’s recommendation and will act accordingly.
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A lot of government policy is geared toward forcing people to take any job offered to them, no matter how shitty, low paying, dangerous, etc. because the alternative is abject poverty with very little help from the government. In other words, government policy uses poverty, or the threat of poverty, to make sure that firms have ready access to workers who must accept below poverty level wages, dangerous working conditions, and no benefits. This is not something that just happened and it's not the way it was when America was great* - in the post war era, prosperity was much more widely shared, unions were strong, and workers had a seat at the table. Now every available penny is siphoned out of worker pay and into executive compensation and shareholder returns.

Now workers have basically had one month - one month! - of slightly enhanced bargaining power coming out of a pandemic because of continued unemployment benefits. All it takes is 30 measly days of restaurant owners not being able to hire $10/hour cooks for 30 hour a week jobs in hot kitchens working 4PM to 1AM, and the Wall Street Journal and politicians are losing their minds over a "labor shortage". It's really pretty incredible.

*noted that women and people of color were largely excluded from the #greatness.
 
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