US study lays bare extreme pay-ratio problem

This particular thread gathers the flies like you-know-what. It happens often around here. They don't know where else to buzz-around.

I know it is difficult not to rebut insane posts. But, there is really no alternative.

Rebutting only incites the dregs further.

We are reduced to making our point and if some really gets up your nose just put them on "Ignore". Aint no way to run a forum, but there's not much alternative ... and, no, I don't mean it's the forum's management fault.

It's just the way it is ...

 

The problem is that you're playing standard blame games. "You're poor and it's your fault. Just a snip of self sacrifice and you'll be rich in no time"

Supply side economics has been rejected for some time mind you. You could try and catch up, perhaps amend your argument to favour of community wealth building:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/preston-model-modern-politics-municipal-socialism/

Still no evidence. You're going to need more than vague tabloidism.

 

This works and no amount of gainsaying by the usual detractors of worker cooperatives can argue with success.

 

LIVE LIKE KINGS

QUOTE="Derideo_Te, post: 1069204732, member: 69526"]This works and no amount of gainsaying by the usual detractors of worker cooperatives can argue with success.[/QUOTE]

You make a good point regarding the dislocation of Profit Motive (on behalf of corporations) and Private Initiative (corporations of all sorts).

Corporations exist to provide goods/services to their Customers. People can afford goods/services because because they are paid to produce them.

The commonality of "objectives" is, to my mind, very evident. Customers are real people. Corporations are not, they are figureheads to owners and particularly TopManagement. (The long-term promise being that "if you are an effective worker, you might be invited to join TopManagement and make megabucks".)

Meaning this:
*On the one hand, we cannot disconnect our own natural initiative to make a good income and the means to do so (ie. hard work).
*On the other hand, neither can we disconnect the fact that some individuals - under the present set of "rules" - make enormously exaggerated amounts of net-income for comparatively little work. (In fact, they don't "work". They have others play-with-their-money to enrich them even further. And the mechanism works!)
*Which they never spend and inevitably leave to their kin who never worked-hard to earn the rewards-of-birth.

And since we cannot disassociate those factors in a functional market-economy we must accept both. Which is systematically unfair.

But we can also modulate the manner in which individuals earn their income by putting up limits. Which is simple - by ultimately 100% Income Taxation above a given level of Total Income and no more tax-breaks.

In today's US "Winner-takes-all Mode":
*There is an elite few who make far too much Net-of-Income-Tax revenues (the 5Percenters),
*Whilst below $54K/year (average US income), another 40% make a comfortable living salary.
*And the remaining 35% earn below the average income simply "make do". (Meaning they live well enough, but not extravagantly.)
*Finally, there are the 15% who make below a Poverty Threshold income ($25K/year for a family of four) and struggle to make ends meet without any guaranty of sustained employment nor an acceptable Minimum Wage.

Only a major remake of Income Taxation schedules in America will change the above sad facts. That is, the super-rich are ripping off the poor - which has been true since the beginning of the nation more than two-centuries ago. And nothing really changed with the advent of Income-Taxation in 1913.

We got rid of a British King only to replace him with Top-Income Americans who live like-kings ...

 

QUOTE="LafayetteBis, post: 1069209474, member: 72696"]
We got rid of a British King only to replace him with Top-Income Americans who live like-kings ...[/QUOTE]
So these Top-Income Americans. Can they tax my tea?

 

I agree.

 

Privilege typically confers income, but not the other way around. Landowners can tax you by making you pay THEM for access to the public services and infrastructure government provides.

 

Let's nationalise!

 

THE BOSSES OF THE SENATE

The only problem/challenge I see is establishing the cooperatives. Based upon what law?

The US is a hodge-podge of states, each with their own set of laws regarding employment - meaning they compete with one another for jobs. Job-Markets should be consistently regulated in the same manner across the nation - with no preferences for any one state or group of states.

Which is consummately stoopid economically in the same nation. Today, countries are competing with one-another and that is LARGELY sufficient as regards competition. The US certainly DOES NOT NEED IT on a local state-level.

Work laws need a common national context, with jurisprudence to back them up. Don't expect that from a Congress driven by Vested Political Interests (namely the Replicants) who dislike immensely any regulation that hinders their freedom to bilk the consumer by providing products/services from wherever they damn well please - seeking always the lowest production-cost in order to maximize the highest profit.

That is neither the sole- nor major-criteria for any Market-economy on earth. Profits, profits, profits until they drive the work out of the US and over to the Far East -ALL IN THE NAME OF PROFITS.

For all the TALK about competition in America, in the rush up to consolidating oligopolies within markets, there is damn little of it. And with the latest court judgement in the AT&T Time-Warner case, we have yet another example of how the courts are favoring Business over Consumer in order to assure profits. This time in the burgeoning market of Internet-related services.

As a consequence, there will be even less competition in the booming Internet market. And we, the sheeple, will pay the resulting higher prices.

We are now more than a century and and half beyond the first consolidation of oligopolistic markets in America. To wit this political cartoon still applies since 1875 - it's title "The Bosses of the Senate":

 

What choice? If you are born poor, statistically you remain poor in the US.

If you want to free-yourself-from-poverty you get an education with which you will find a good job. (More than likely, but neither is it a "magic-formula".)

But that magic-formula for exiting poverty, whereas it cost my kids here in France $1000 a year, costs $10K at any state tertiary-education school in the US.

If you live below the Poverty Threshold, your parents are making less than $25K a year. Where are they going to find $10K a year to send you into post-secondary education at a state institution of higher-learning?

They aint, which means you are STUCK there ...

PS: From Huffpost - "Here's Scientific Proof That Poverty Can Be Inherited"

 

What prevents one who is born poor from increasing her income and wealth?

 

Statistics! If you allow them. Some collectives should be avoided.

 

Your remark is meaningless if you don't quote the person to whom it is addressed.

Duhhhhhhh .....

 

Kode (post #316) was quoted in that post by Crank. You have to click on "show ignored content" to see it.

Duhhhhhh.....
Moving right along.

 

The legal requirement to pay the privileged full market value just for permission to do so.

 

Well put.

I am not sure that Americans understand fully the consequences of abject poverty and what it does to the human being. Or, from there, what it does to a sizable portion of our population.

For which one fact is inescapable. Particularly this one below in red from here: Bureau of Justice Statistic, Education And Correctional Populations

Now, someone please tell me why an individual has to go to jail to get a GED - which is after-all better than nothing. And if correcting that is not of the order of a "National Priority" then what-the-hell is?

Snatching children from a Mexican mother's care ... ?

 

And whilst we are on the subject of the GED, this bit of researched info from the National Center for Education Statistics here:

That bit in red within the above quotation means that "we should get it right the first time around". And, we don't!

Because we are pissing-away-money on other expenditures. The most of which goes to the DoD - who promise recruits to send them into a post-secondary education (if they don't get killed "serving their country").

It requires a real lack-of-smarts to take that bet!

Our kids would be better off if the Federal government subsidized (at least partially) high-school education, to assure that the necessary means are available to graduate as many as possible.

We are closing in on 100%, but it takes just a bit more effort to get there. From the NCES (here):

 

Your desire to provide education to you fellow man is a noble end. I hope you choose to use noble means to accomplish it.

 

Taxes

 

So, not a noble means. I figured as much.

 

taxes are of course noble, and necessary

 

taking people's property by force is noble in your opinion. doesn't surprise me.

 

Your tax obligation is NOT your "property" because you OWE We the People for the civilized society that supports you.

 

Feel free to stop doing so at any time.

 

It's called society. It's the social contract you agreed to.