Thread: Wealth Inequality in the US

Originally Posted by sabang

Guess which party lionises John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Ronnie Raygun? Symbols of a past that never existed, outside yer TV screen.

Your ideological bias shining thru again we see.

There's a few of the Hollywood crowd that have come out of of the closet like Bruce Willis etc.

Go here for a list of 146 of them.

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Go here for a list of 146 of them.

Jimmie Cagney? Clarki Gable? Chuck Norris ? Ethel Merman?

who could forget Tracy Scoggins - the face of the tea party youth voter

Wealth inequality in the US. Bad and getting worse:

It is indeed a major scandal, that is being assiduously avoided by the political and media establishment. The economic and societal danger being posed by this loaded dice is potentially calamitous. And it's all down to a difference in tax policy, assisted by artificially low interest rates. The resultant and unprecedented wealth transfer (as best I'm aware) from the bottom 80% of society to the top 1% alone, threatens the basis of the US economy, if these trends continue unabated.

Originally Posted by sabang;2465240

"True, but that suggests nothing changes, which is not quite true. Yep, smart kids get ahead- but the smart kids used to tend Republican- now they overwhelmingly tend to vote Democrat".

The last remaining Republican 'strongholds' are-

[I

1- Middle aged and elderly while males
2- The military[/I]

Don't know how true that is, and quite frankly don't care, but based on the overall popular vote in the most recent election it seems a bit suspect. I totally understand why the Democrats would wish to paint and furiously promote such an idea however. Many voters swing back and forth between parties in cycles and it sometimes does not take that much for the cycle to turn very quickly.

If the GOP could come up with one....just one, really great speaker, with the right look and a message of resonance, things would very likely change very quickly in their favor.

The way national leaders are chosen in most western countries now, a complete outsider could be forgiven for thinking that the competition was for the job of talk show host, instead of national leader.

I really don't even view most of the things I've been posting about in this thread , as having anything much to do with Republican or Democrat. Saving discipline, investing in the markets, bonds, art, precious metals, real estate etc have nothing to do with party politics.

There are lots of Democrats as well as Republicans who are very well heeled and big investors. I've mostly been talking about the difference between those who buy into the system; work with it and prosper, as opposed to those who simply complain about it; refuse to participate in the real economy; end up as wards of the state, and cluttering up internet forums with their hard luck stories and railing against the "system" that failed them.

Even Chinese and Vietnamese communists seem to understand that, but for a certain smallish group of dedicated TD'ers, it's all about envy the successful, hating the rich, and using spite, whinging and personal attacks against the messenger instead of talking about the message, unless the message fits into their own narrow and inflexible view of how the world should be.

Respect to Independent Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont, one of the few politicians in Washington who still represents the American people-

Originally Posted by koman

If the GOP could come up with one....just one, really great speaker, with the right look and a message of resonance, things would very likely change very quickly in their favor.

Listened to Senator Ted Cruz lately?

Only been in the Senate 6 months and has already shaken up the 'old guard' significantly. The guy is smart, articulate and a force to be reckoned with. Democratic stragitist James Carvile, the Ragin' Cajun calls Cruz a formidible opponent.

Originally Posted by koman

I totally understand why the Democrats would wish to paint and furiously promote such an idea however.

Sure, 'success sells'. But such gloating, it you wanna call it that, is backed up by statistics. The GOP has a major demographic problem, thoroughly deserved imo.

Originally Posted by koman

If the GOP could come up with one....just one, really great speaker, with the right look and a message of resonance, things would very likely change very quickly in their favor.

"message of resonance"
Truth is the best message of resonance, but in the information age the talking head is important too, granted. The current GOP lacks either, and I too hope that situation will change, if only through necessity. A functioning democracy requires a functional opposition, that has become very clear. A two party system can two easily be hijacked.

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Listened to Senator Ted Cruz lately?

Only been in the Senate 6 months and has already shaken up the 'old guard' significantly. The guy is smart, articulate and a force to be reckoned with. Democratic stragitist James Carvile, the Ragin' Cajun calls Cruz a formidible opponent.

Ted Cruz? Seriously?!

The Rethuglican Tea Bag senator from the shithole state of Texas?

The guy so unpopular for his efforts to scuttle the Hurricane Sandy relief bill that fellow Republicans refuse to be seen with him?

A relief bill, which, by the way, ended up passing both the house and the senate despite Cruz's cynical efforts to kill it.

Yeah, he'd make a great speaker! Just what the GOP needs!

Ted Cruz, a guy so unpopular that he's even managed to alienate his own support base back in Texas-

Source: Video: Texas Conservatives Fund: Ted Cruz should be ashamed - USATODAY.com

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

stragitist James Carvile, the Ragin' Cajun calls Cruz a formidible opponent

His is solid in the redneck South and West. He certainly knows how to appeal to the ignorant base of the Republican Party. He will surely get the support of racists, tea baggers, bible thumpers, gun hoarders and tax cheats - in other words, people who are intent on dismantling the Federal government.

Originally Posted by Humbert

He will surely get the support of racists, tea baggers, bible thumpers, gun hoarders and tax cheats

That's strange. Why would you want your party to have these people in it? Why would your party actually have someone who does not represent their "agenda" allegedly to be spreading messages they do not approve of to attract members they do not approve of.

Could it be, perhaps, that Dems and Rep are all the same and they don't actually care?

Originally Posted by Humbert

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

stragitist James Carvile, the Ragin' Cajun calls Cruz a formidible opponent

His is solid in the redneck South and West. He certainly knows how to appeal to the ignorant base of the Republican Party. He will surely get the support of racists, tea baggers, bible thumpers, gun hoarders and tax cheats - in other words, people who are intent on dismantling the Federal government.

^ And since the racists, tea baggers, gun nuts and bible thumpers are a shrinking demographic we can expect Cruz to lose even worse than Romney

(I suppose this really belongs in the thread about the future of the GOP (as if it has a future) ) https://teakdoor.com/speakers-corner/...-the-future-30

^Is it really a shrinking demographic, though?

In general, what these groups share is a hatred for the way the 18th century liberalism embodied in the Constitution has slowly worked its way out of the realm of ideas and into daily life. In a very real sense, it is the losing side in the Civil War festering and polluting American democracy.

As long as there will be men who hate and fear women, whites who hate and fear blacks, men over 50 who slowly learn to resent and fear everyone younger: the updated Republican Party will always have a base.

Just look at the posters on this board and tell me that that demographic is shrinking. Shifting and changing maybe... shrinking? I don't think so.

It's sad for America of course that such a proto-fascist metamorphosis is taking place, but as we can see with the "change" brought on by accelerated rates of assassination around the world, it's even worse for the rest.

Originally Posted by mao say dung

^Is it really a shrinking demographic, though?

In general, what these groups share is a hatred for the way the 18th century liberalism embodied in the Constitution has slowly worked its way out of the realm of ideas and into daily life. In a very real sense, it is the losing side in the Civil War festering and polluting American democracy.

As long as there will be men who hate and fear women, whites who hate and fear blacks, men over 50 who slowly learn to resent and fear everyone younger: the updated Republican Party will always have a base.

Just look at the posters on this board and tell me that that demographic is shrinking. Shifting and changing maybe... shrinking? I don't think so.

It's sad for America of course that such a proto-fascist metamorphosis is taking place, but as we can see with the "change" brought on by accelerated rates of assassination around the world, it's even worse for the rest.

Angry old white men are definitely a shrinking demographic in the US. (Though perhaps not on this forum)

Even Republican Senator Lindsey Graham agrees-

Sen. Lindsey Graham: Not Enough 'Angry White Guys' to Sustain GOP



"The demographics race we're losing badly," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told the Washington Post. "We're not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term."

^I think it's a little facile to assume that only angry white guys will ever fit the bill. Angry middle class black guys, chauvinistic and racist Latino guys, Asian-American men and women who don't want their kids growing up surrounded by gays and gangbangers.

The angry anti-liberal, anti-democratic demographic is NOT limited to older white guys.

“Obama wins because it’s not a traditional America anymore,” Bill O’Reilly said on Fox News last night. “The white establishment is the minority. People want things.”

Just listen. That creaking, cracking noise you hear — not unlike a rusty forklift — is the sound of conservative straight white men trying to fight off change. But, as we saw last night, change is rolling over them.

The whoppers emerging from some candidates’ mouths were so outrageous I couldn’t even catalog, never mind rank, them all. A woman’s rape could be God’s plan, said Richard Mourdock. Todd Akin explained “legitimate rape” to voters. “I’m not concerned about the very poor,” said Mitt Romney, later dismissing half the country as “victims.”

Tempting as it may be, it’s a mistake to scapegoat these hapless candidates or dismiss their unvarnished comments as aberrations. Rather, they speak to a reactionary confusion that is gutting the GOP, and to a larger conflict over the meaning of America.

I have traveled this country extensively, before and during the election campaign, speaking to whites about their political values, most recently in various swing suburbs in Ohio the weekend before the vote. The vast majority of straight white men I encountered were reasonable, thoughtful voters. And here’s an irony: Much of the GOP — think Romney, Mourdock, Akin — cling to a political narrative according to which white male voters are “conservative” and “minority” voters are “liberal,” and where white male voters are self-sufficient and everyone else is dependent. It’s exactly this form of white-on-white racial profiling, a fear of the future, that produced the election’s outrageous comments about unions, the poor, rape, women, minorities and the like.

Why did conservative straight white men self-destruct so spectacularly this election? Perhaps because, in trying to secure the votes of other white men, they failed to notice that these white men have mothers, daughters, gay relatives and/or friends who are racial minorities; and that other white men are suffering economically; and that straight white men can also embody the country’s dramatic change? The cheap, divisive, nativistic, racialized ways that conservative leaders divvy up the electorate has now come to spook them. It’s a vicious loop: What this political narrative does is to fuel a further sense of embattlement and decline among disenfranchised straight white men.

But here’s the thing: Many — perhaps most — straight white male voters are ready to embrace the 21st century; but a great many others are kicking and screaming. The irony is not lost on me. While in Ohio this past weekend, the only shouting and hostility I encountered from a white male voter was a man hurling unprintable epithets about the president. On the lawn in front of his crumbling single-family rambler, I noticed a sign that read “Stop the War on Coal.”

Like whiteness itself, once stable, reliable institutions are perceived to be “broken”: the nuclear family, the classroom, the “border,” the economy and the very nature of work. Little wonder all the venom flew as conservative straight white male candidates flailed while facing a dramatically changing country and electorate.

And now the Republicans should realize it is their own party that is broken. The politics of alienation is not an agenda. If such politics cannot win during such a tenuous economic backdrop, it’s unlikely to ever again.

Fully 89 percent of Romney’s 2012 voters are non-Hispanic whites. But surely Republicans know that by 2042, whites will no longer be a majority in the U.S. Just a generation ago, in 1976, whites made up 90 percent of the national electorate. In 1984, whites made up 86 percent of the national electorate. In 2008, whites made up 74 percent of the national electorate. This year, it was roughly 72 percent. How is the GOP coping with whites’ dwindling numbers? 2012 Republicans enjoyed a solid edge among white voters – but does that edge amount to solace or cement boots? What will it mean for the GOP to be “American,” when whites are no longer the numeric majority, nor even the “mainstream”?

Young voters, women, blacks, Asians, Latinos and our white allies: Witness the growing coalition uplifting the Democratic Party. The president defended his recent political record, but pivoted the election between a stark choice: the past versus the future. Forward, he insisted. The war on voting rights; the war on immigrant rights; the war on union rights; it’s not just about decimating Obama’s base, it’s about consolidating corporate power, and keeping the majority’s privilege intact.

This election unfolded against this backdrop, what I call “The White People Deadline”: 2042. As this cultural “time bomb” ticks, fear mounts over a perceived loss of whites’ raw power – demographic, social, economic and political. So the debates raged on, including over women’s reproductive rights. Often racially coded, these contraceptive and abortion political clashes are a proxy debate for whites’ demographic viability. The political parties scrambled to consolidate their appeal to white voters even as they scramble to compensate for the decline of white voters. A new white upper class and a declining white lower class are diverging so vastly in core values and behaviors, writes Charles Murray in “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” that they “barely recognize their underlying American kinship.” Murray’s much-discussed tract essentially yokes a decline of social values and of “whiteness” to an entire demographic’s “failure” to cope with a challenging future.

Coming apart? That doesn’t just describe the widening gulf between the prospects of rich and poor whites. It describes the firewall straight white conservatives are trying to erect against the future. The hapless candidates railed away against their sense of decline, marching to defeat at the polls.

“The white establishment is the minority. People want things.” What things does O’Reilly, the rickety sage of straight white men, mean? Clean energy? Immigration reform? Reproductive rights? Forward-thinking healthcare? Marriage equality?

The lesson for conservatives isn’t to fight harder against the change. It is to surf it. The GOP not only failed to diversify its base; it needs to rethink its assumptions about straight white men in the first place.

Whites-only GOP meets its demographic destiny - Salon.com

Originally Posted by mao say dung

^I think it's a little facile to assume that only angry white guys will ever fit the bill. Angry middle class black guys, chauvinistic and racist Latino guys, Asian-American men and women who don't want their kids growing up surrounded by gays and gangbangers.

The angry anti-liberal, anti-democratic demographic is NOT limited to older white guys.

Well, I think we're talking about who votes Republican, right?

By the GOP's own admission, they do not appeal to Hispanics, African Americans and other minorities. The GOP doesn't do very well with female voters either. The polling numbers bear this out as does Mitt Romney's defeat in the last presidential election.

To win the last presidential election Romney needed to win more than 62% of the white male vote. Obviously it didn't happen.

Did you know that in the last election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney polled at 0% amongst African American voters? Yes, ZERO! (Romney and Black Voters: An Uneasy Relationship - NationalJournal.com)

Quite ironic when you consider that Republican Abe Lincoln's signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves. Republicans in Congress worked to write and to pass the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, helped to outlaw slavery, guarantee equal protection under the law, and secured voting rights for African American men.

What the heck happened?!

Originally Posted by bsnub

Whites-only GOP meets its demographic destiny - Salon.com

Fantastic article, worthy of a green

Originally Posted by sabang

Yep, smart kids get ahead- but the smart kids used to tend Republican- now they overwhelmingly tend to vote Democrat.

I have worked in the tech industry here in the US for the last 15 years give or take for companies like Microsoft, Amazon.com and F5 Networks to name a few. Of all of my coworkers almost all of them were liberal and it was pretty well assumed that literally everyone in the company was a democrat. The tech industry is were all of Americas smartest go today and almost all of them from the top down are quite liberal.

As a matter of fact if someone was conservative they probably didn't bother to mention it.

Originally Posted by bsnub

Much of the GOP — think Romney, Mourdock, Akin — cling to a political narrative according to which white male voters are “conservative” and “minority” voters are “liberal,” and where white male voters are self-sufficient and everyone else is dependent.

And don't forget the ever lurking 'victim card'. Yep, the most pampered generation in world history, who have squandered much of their national & childrens legacy, are the real 'victims' here.

Originally Posted by bsnub

it’s about consolidating corporate power, and keeping the majority’s privilege intact.

Zing. And about not paying your bills. A rich Republican 'patriot' would rather see the American underclasses go uneducated, than forsake any of his precious Bush era tax cuts.

^ In the investment biz, we tended to be more conservative/ republican oriented. But as the republicans forsook conservatism and pragmatism, that changed.

Originally Posted by Humbert

dismantling the Federal government.

It certainly needs to be cut down in size...

...although you, a Big Government Statist, abhor the thought.

"You didn't Make That" is basically your credo, isn't it Humbert...

So, because Charlene Lamb disagrees with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that excuses the Republicans from cutting the State Department's security budget?

Hillary Clinton has been quite clear on this point:

Originally Posted by TonyBKK

So, because Charlene Lamb disagrees with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that excuses the Republicans from cutting the State Department's security budget?

Hillary Clinton has been quite clear on this point:

If I may, your honour, I might venutre to suggest that some, not me, but some might perhaps have a slight thought that that is a very tenuous link indeed. A couple of random quotes and suddenly if is GOPS fault that a bloke got killed?

(waits patiently to get removed from thread for daring to challenge Tonybkk )

Originally Posted by bsnub

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Originally Posted by pseudolus

[
(waits patiently to get removed from thread for daring to challenge Tonybkk

No doubt...

Nah - and no offence BM cos you know already that I think Republican drone mouthpieces are mental as well.