Thread: Wealth Inequality in the US

Originally Posted by bsnub

Speak for yourself

Yes, I always speak and think for myself. Perhaps you could try it occasionally, instead of just clipping bits and pieces from left wing blog sites (or the NYT which is just as bad) where minds are made up even before facts are presented.

You really don't comprehend very well do you. It is not the actual minimum wage itself that presents the problem in many cases, so much as the effect it has on the demand for higher wages all the way up the scale and the often severe effects it has on the cost of operating small business ventures. This is probably the most damaging aspect of the minimum wage, but also the most neglected.

When the economy is booming and employers are compelled to pay higher wages in order to hire anyone, there is no mechanism to limit the amount of wages employers have to pay just to get somebody to take out the trash and sweep the floor, other than supply and demand. This economic reality is accepted by people like you, ....but when the reverse happens you wish to force the same employer to pay more, even though there may be two dozen applicants willing to do the work for less....

When the economy is booming and small business is doing well with sales rising steadily they can, and do, pay higher wages....usually out of necessity. If we now force minimum wages on them and the economy is not doing well, and sales are declining along with costs of everything else rising, they can not afford the increased wages so they either fold up their tent or downsize in order to lower costs.


You always seem to forget that the great majority of employers are pretty small companies for whom wages and benefits represent a huge part of their costs, and can make the difference between staying in business or folding.

If you insist in making labor unaffordable, through arbitrary wage increases and imposed benefits, then you force them to abandon the business and lay off whatever employees they may have....or if they stay in business, force them to cut hiring more people, and find other ways to get the jobs done. That's what the smaller guys have to do....the big guys can either choose to absorb it or move operations offshore.

I've been there...done that....nothing like real life experience to counter union-hall theory and bullshit from the NYT. Not all corporations are like GE, GM or the State Government....but some of these NYT type studies and political decisions are made as if they were.

I know you and some others will never accept such explanations......but that's how things work when you live in the actual business world instead of wallowing in academic studies and Marxist theories. Carry on.....

Originally Posted by koman

but that's how things work when you live in the actual business world instead of wallowing in academic studies and Marxist theories.

Yes I guess you know more then 600 economists. The evidence is overwhelming that raising the minimum wage is an overall net win for the economy and in states with a high minimum wage (like my state of Washington) there is no evidence that it costs jobs.

Originally Posted by koman

Perhaps you could try it occasionally, instead of just clipping bits and pieces from left wing blog sites (or the NYT which is just as bad)

I do all the time I only occasionally post links to relevent articles. I do not spam the boards with nonsense like Boon Mee. With regards to the NYT I think that its history and integrity speaks for itself. It is only those on the far right who dislike the times. It has a rich and deep history of journalistic integrity.

The article I quoted and linked to had sources to back up its claims and the simple fact is that you where proven wrong. You had to change tack with the post above but you are still arguing from a losing postion. The fact is you have never admitted when you have been wrong in the past so why start now.

The more I read this thread the more I realise that most Republican voters are too busy feeling smug, looking at how much better off they are than those dreadful poor people, without realising how much they are getting shafted by the extremely wealthy (and powerful).

You're looking at a nation where the median wage is lower than it was 25 years ago. Yet the 1% and business sector are richer and more cashed up than they have ever been. What a sick joke- this has nothing to do with liberal/ participative democracy, or the consumer society. The US is systematically destroying the very economic and societal model it was instrumental in creating.

Originally Posted by sabang

You're looking at a nation where the median wage is lower than it was 25 years ago. Yet the 1% and business sector are richer and more cashed up than they have ever been. What a sick joke- this has nothing to do with liberal/ participative democracy, or the consumer society. The US is systematically destroying the very economic and societal model it was instrumental in creating.

Link please to the stats showing U.S. median income is lower than it was 25 years ago, the state of Wash. has a median income of about 51,000 U.S. dollar.

Originally Posted by RPETER65

Originally Posted by sabang

You're looking at a nation where the median wage is lower than it was 25 years ago. Yet the 1% and business sector are richer and more cashed up than they have ever been. What a sick joke- this has nothing to do with liberal/ participative democracy, or the consumer society. The US is systematically destroying the very economic and societal model it was instrumental in creating.

Link please to the stats showing U.S. median income is lower than it was 25 years ago, the state of Wash. has a median income of about 51,000 U.S. dollar.

Here you go:


Source: Census Bureau

Headlines about these numbers tend to focus on how we have now experienced a lost decade for the middle-class American family, with incomes back to their late 1990s level. But as the chart shows it's really worse than that.
In 1989, the median American household made $51,681 in current dollars (the 2012 number, again, was $51,017). That means that 24 years ago, a middle class American family was making more than the a middle class family was making one year ago.
This isn't a lost decade for economic gains for Americans. It is a lost generation.

The typical American family makes less than it did in 1989

Here is a short and informative trailor.