Taxes on the rich already gone...

Sure I do.

 

Hating the government and Obama? LMAO
I am a moderate democrat and I don't hate the government or Obama. I don't believe letting GM and Chrysler file for bankruptcy would have caused a recession. And I do not believe had the government not bailed out the financial industry it would have been that much an issue. As it is, we are more slow in recovering from our housing collapse recession than ever before from a recession.

 

Then why did your show that graph which only showed some correlation and did not have anything in it suggesting unions would have helped or hurt?

 

Because it suggests that the decline of union power occurred concurrent with the stagnation of wages and the redistribution of most of the growth and wealth over the past 30 years to the top 10%, and mostly top 1%.

 

Look at the curve again. There is some correlation, but it doesn't follow the curve close enough to suggest anything of the sort. What it does more than that is show the effects of WWII and Korea then the subsequent industrial speed up afterward. If Unions had been a reason for improving the middle class they would have continued to go up well before their % of the work force started to decrease.
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Don't blame the 1%. http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/04/24/pay-gap-rich-poor/

 

I certainly did not state that unions are the only reason for the redistribution. Changes in tax policy, minimum wage, overtime laws, outsourcing and automation have all had an effect as well.

 

I think unions had a lot less to do with it than you suggest. Click on the charts in post #256 and you will see that the swing in union membership does not correspond to your chart of compression of wages. In my opinion unions contributed more to the curtailment of wages than helped wages because they were a major reasons for job mobility.

 

How in your opinion did the unions contribute to the curtailment of wages while unions were declining in power?

 

By being a factor in jobs moving to non union areas or off shore causing jobs to be lost or moved to a lower cost area. It is a commonly known issue that when capital is mobile and either taxes or labor costs (or both) are high capital moves and the costs are shifted to labor in the form of either lower wages or lost jobs.

I'll get back to you if you have a response. Time to feed my doggie and take a nap.

 

A person sure wouldn't know it reading your posts.

 

How were unions a factor in jobs moving to non-union areas (eg Walmart)? It sounds like what you are saying is that because places like Wal-mart are able to take advantage of weaker union laws and employ bottom rate labor, they could undercut the prices of competitors that paid their employees higher (union) wages.

Exactly my point. If places like Wal-mart were unionized, they'd have to pay their middle class employees higher wages also, and then they wouldn't have a competitive edge.

In other words, folks are making higher profits by moving production overseas to take advantage of lower cost labor and getting bigger profits here. A good reason why we should raise taxes on higher profits and lower them on working people, instead of the other way around. Then it wouldn't be so much of an advantage to produce overseas.

Which is why you have to neutralize that incentive by making the playing fields more equal.

 

Walmart? What do they have to do with it? How about Boeing moving to SC, or the auto companies starting to be built in AL, GA, MS?

What discount chain do you know pays union wages?

We have lowered taxes on working people and raised them on the wealthy.

Like pushing jobs to China and India and making their playing field more equal?

Unions lost power then the government started controlling the work place safety and conditions.

 

What happened to your nap?

 

Really enjoyed it

 

You beat me to it.

 

I think you underestimate exactly what Obama inherited. I would have figured a slow recovery anyway based on the fact that in many ways we were back to 1929, but we just didn't let it happen exactly like 1929. So a slow housing recovery is no surprise to me whatsoever. Not to mention, this recession wasn't like any other. I'm perplexed why people have not seen that. It wasn't but a few weeks into Obamas presidency they started blaming him for everything which was another mystery. Of course later into his presidency I realized it was no longer a mystery when I realized what the GOP was up to.

And "not believing the government bailing out the financial institution would have been that bad" is mind boggling for me. What variables in 2008 would be so different than 1929, that would have fixed our financial markets all by their lonesome? It didn't happen in 1929.

 

I am a democrat, a moderate democrat, but I don't accept the left wing leadership which has virtually stolen my party out from under me. Bear Sterns and Countrywide went belly up. I don't believe the rest would have followed suit even without the bailout. They would have been hurting for a while but I believe they would have survived. What really peed me off was giving them the money without strings attached.

What concerns me is not understanding why in 1998/9 on to the end of Clinton's and Bush's presidency neither seemed interested in stopping the wildly inflationary housing market. Low interest and no down payment loans were the primary cause of the housing crash and that caused the recession. IE fiscal and monetary policy for parts of two administration were responsible helped along by speculation, abuse of ARMs and other poorly handled regulatory issues.

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BTW, what may be mind boggling to you does not concern me, I tend to make up my own mind based on my own education and experience and I believe that both extremes of the political spectrum are equally responsible for the problems in our economy. On the right there is the lack of recognition that some people need help, and on the left there is the habituation of big brother. So come back slugging, I can take it.

 

BTW, I forgot to mention, WWII was a big help to FDR in recovering from the great depression.

 

Thank you for your propaganda and rhetoric; but it provides no argument regarding wartime tax rates on the wealthiest merely to ensure our public policies don't become boondoggles and generational forms of theft and that form of market based metric in our political-economy.

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Thank you for pointing out that it was the relative Communism of our wartime economy that finally spent enough money to get us over the Great Depression.

 

I was providing no argument at all, merely the facts of the situation. If you somehow can prove that the less wealthy pay more taxes than the wealthy please give us a link proving that supposition.

Bwahahahahahaha

 

Why should they? The government isn't generating their income.

 

Show me the proof that trillions went overseas. Even if it did, who cares as long as laws weren't broken. Money is put overseas due to over-regulation/over-taxation here at home.

 

Why should I need to do that, under any form of Capitalism where economic discrimination is both legal and socially acceptable? Are you claiming that no Taxes should discriminate simply because some people are worth it?

In any Case, wartime Tax rates on the wealthiest should merely be employed to ensure more efficient public servants are placed at the disposal of the electorate of the United States.

 

No! Absolutely not. You are claiming that the rich don't pay enough taxes. I stated that they pay more taxes than the less wealthy. You seemed to disagree. I asked why? Show me where the less wealthy are taxes more than the wealthy. Otherwise why not stop beating that dead horse to death over and over again.

Higher taxes are already being employed on the most wealthy. That has been the point all along. As it is, only the top 51% pay all the federal income taxes. Between 47% and 49% of the people pay no federal income tax at all. Effectively it is the most wealthy who pay ALL OF THE FEDERAL INCOME TAXES.