Inequality in America is getting worse according to top economists

[Daelak]

Supply and demand is what you apply to a commodity or a service. Applying this to labor (i.e people) is inhuman and barbarous. Selling, buying, trading and using people as one would a bushel of wheat used to have a name. It was called slavery.

Ding ding ding! They don't consider some humans as actually human, hmmmmm I wonder where this type of language came from?

[Deleted]

Supply and demand is what you apply to a commodity or a service. Applying this to labor (i.e people) is inhuman and barbarous. Selling, buying, trading and using people as one would a bushel of wheat used to have a name. It was called slavery.

Why do people with no skills or anything to contribute to society deserve a higher wage? Why should I pay for people I will never see/know or meet in my life?
You could train a monkey to flip a burger twice and then put it on a bun and into a little bag, don't see why we should be telling these people how wonderful they are.

- - - Updated - - -

Ding ding ding! They don't consider some humans as actually human, hmmmmm I wonder where this type of language came from?

They are human, just not a problem society has to deal with. They can deal with it them selfs.
If you don't contribute anything you're worthless. If your only skill is to flip a burger 20 hours a week then these people should start bettering them selfs.
So backwards to start rewarding shit like this.

[delus]

Oh no! What should we do????

Well, if you follow French revolution logic we should drag the 1% out into the streets and lynch them.

[Ethris]

Wow, maybe instead of going to school, working hard, and making something of myself; I should make terrible personal decisions which keep me in poverty so I can attempt to guilt-trip everyone else into fixing my problems.

It's obviously everyone else's fault because I can't be held responsible for my own decisions!

[Daelak]

They are human, just not a problem society has to deal with. They can deal with it them selfs.
If you don't contribute anything you're worthless. If your only skill is to flip a burger 20 hours a week then these people should start bettering them selfs.
So backwards to start rewarding shit like this.

Remember kids, your value as a human is only determined by your economic viability! Hooray new conservatism, same as the old conservatism!

[Deleted]

Or the people on minimum wage could start doing stuff making them worth more money.
Supply & Demand. I can find 200 people that are good enough to flip my burgers in a day if I opened a McDonald's in any town/city in the US.

Sorry, but that is bullshit. Unless your argument is that the minimum wage job is optional, somebody has to do that job. And if they do that full time they should be able to make a living. Using supply and demand as an excuse to exploit people makes you an a-hole, not a savvy businessman.

[Deleted]

Sorry, but that is bullshit. Unless your argument is that the minimum wage job is optional, somebody has to do that job. And if they do that full time they should be able to make a living. Using supply and demand as an excuse to exploit people makes you an a-hole, not a savvy businessman.

It is optional. You can always find a better job.
You choose to work in a McDonald's flipping the burgers and you get paid for whats its worth (which isn't much).
Don't like it, go get a better job. Last time I checked I don't have any education or connections and I made it just fine.

[Glorious Leader]

Remember kids, your value as a human is only determined by your economic viability! Hooray new conservatism, same as the old conservatism!

Indeed. How little has changed.

[wheresmywoft]

It is optional. You can always find a better job.
You choose to work in a McDonald's flipping the burgers and you get paid for whats its worth (which isn't much).
Don't like it, go get a better job. Last time I checked I don't have any education or connections and I made it just fine.

Is the availability of jobs unlimited?

[Gestopft]

It is optional. You can always find a better job.
You choose to work in a McDonald's flipping the burgers and you get paid for whats its worth (which isn't much).
Don't like it, go get a better job. Last time I checked I don't have any education or connections and I made it just fine.

The job itself isn't optional for the company- somebody has to do it.

The problem with the "get a better job" approach is that while it can work at an individual level, it isn't a societal solution. An individual can go and get skills to move up, but that shitty job they left is then going to be filled by somebody else. The problem here isn't that a particular individual doesn't have the skills/opportunity to get a better job- the problem is the jobs themselves.

[Docturphil]

This is crazy. The bottom 50% is making 25K a year?
Half the country surviving on that? How do they even make ends meet !?!?

I feel like that's probably the average income for the bottom 50%. That number is probably severely dragged down by the lowest 10%. And I'm wondering how they're coming up with these numbers. Does anyone over the age of 18 get factored in? Because that's going go skew the results since you'll have a lot of people between the ages of 18 and 22 who don't even work or work part time because they're in college.

And besides all that this whole "income inequality" thing seems to be based on the idea that there is a finite and unchanging total amount of "wealth" in a country which can never be expanded. This is completely false. It's also possible, and probably is the case, that the rich are just getting richer faster than the poor and lower middle class are getting richer. Saying that the bottom 50% get a percentage of the total wealth in a country doesn't mean shit if you're not making that relative to the GDP of the entire country compared to what it used to be.

We need action. I can't believe people voted in the new guy who is gonna cut taxes on the rich.

Last time I looked at his tax plans he wanted to simplify income tax for everyone to a flat 15% or something like that, which wouldn't really be "cutting taxes for the rich". It would be more like "equalizing taxes for everyone".

Currently most of the total income tax comes from the middle and upper class. This whole "rich people don't have to pay taxes" thing is complete bullshit.

- - - Updated - - -

Is the availability of jobs unlimited?

Innovation, imagination, freelancing, and entrepreneurship would say yes. If we're talking about looking for a job under an employer, then not really.

[Jeezy911]

Wow Obama really did a crappy job, I mean wasn't this his whole agenda?

[Zan15]

don't worry if we give them this one last tax break it will finally trickle down to us!!!!

[Glorious Leader]

The job itself isn't optional for the company- somebody has to do it.

The problem with the "get a better job" approach is that while it can work at an individual level, it isn't a societal solution. An individual can go and get skills to move up, but that shitty job they left is then going to be filled by somebody else. The problem here isn't that a particular individual doesn't have the skills/opportunity to get a better job- the problem is the jobs themselves.

Yes virtually every conservative solution to problems commits gross falacies of composition. In fact whole economic schools dismiss aggregation entirely as if macro were merely scaled micro. More is different. Emergent properties exist. You cannot propose individual solutions to fix national scale problems.

[wheresmywoft]

Last time I looked at his tax plans he wanted to simplify income tax for everyone to a flat 15% or something like that, which wouldn't really be "cutting taxes for the rich". It would be more like "equalizing taxes for everyone".

Currently most of the total income tax comes from the middle and upper class. This whole "rich people don't have to pay taxes" thing is complete bullshit.

- - - Updated - - -



Innovation, imagination, freelancing, and entrepreneurship would say yes. If we're talking about looking for a job under an employer, then not really.

Which just happens to cut taxes on the rich, and increase it on the poor. Reword it all you want. The aftermath of such a change is still worthy of discussion.

... And how are those unlimited? Stating that they are has no explanatory powers whatsoever.

[Gestopft]

And besides all that this whole "income inequality" thing seems to be based on the idea that there is a finite and unchanging total amount of "wealth" in a country which can never be expanded.

Nobody is saying this.

It's also possible, and probably is the case, that the rich are just getting richer faster than the poor and lower middle class are getting richer. Saying that the bottom 50% get a percentage of the total wealth in a country doesn't mean shit if you're not making that relative to the GDP of the entire country compared to what it used to be.

This is essentially true, but the middle and lower class really aren't getting any richer once you adjust for inflation. The discussion is usually phrased in terms of "share of new wealth." Almost all of the new wealth being created is going to the very top, and the proportion of income and wealth owned by the richest has been increasing. New wealth is being created, but incomes for most people aren't going up as fast as inflation and the cost of living.

- - - Updated - - -

Wow Obama really did a crappy job, I mean wasn't this his whole agenda?

Six years of a GoP Congress was a rather effective roadblock against anything he wanted to get done on the economic front. He never even got to sign an increase to the minimum wage.

[Felya]

Innovation, imagination, freelancing, and entrepreneurship would say yes. If we're talking about looking for a job under an employer, then not really.

Did you just say the solution for McDonald's employees is entrepreneurship? Do you think life is a movie or something? McDonalds not McDougals...

[Jeezy911]

Nobody is saying this.



This is essentially true, but the middle and lower class really aren't getting any richer once you adjust for inflation. The discussion is usually phrased in terms of "share of new wealth." Almost all of the new wealth being created is going to the very top, and the proportion of income and wealth owned by the richest has been increasing. New wealth is being created, but incomes for most people aren't going up as fast as inflation and the cost of living.

- - - Updated - - -



Six years of a GoP Congress was a rather effective roadblock against anything he wanted to get done on the economic front. He never even got to sign an increase to the minimum wage.

So why didn't he do it when he had full control of all 3 branches his first 2 years?

[Docturphil]

... And how are those unlimited? Stating that they are has no explanatory powers whatsoever.

Well nobody really knows what the limit is because nobody knows what could be introduced into the market which hasn't yet been invented. Twenty-five years ago nobody thought, "Man someone really needs to make a good social media website". The market didn't exist for such a thing. Nobody knew the value of it and nobody had any idea what it would be worth. It was basically something that people wanted that they didn't even know they wanted.

So if you consider things like that, it seems like there isn't really a limit on potential jobs. People just have to find something to do that people want. That's how new jobs are created.

[petej0]

Did you just say the solution for McDonald's employees is entrepreneurship? Do you think life is a movie or something? McDonalds not McDougals...

A pay raise wont help them when machines replace many of their jobs in the coming years. These people need skills. The minimum wage fight has always been about the skills of the people filling these jobs.