You really don't understand the extreme amount of dishonesty in this post do you? Cherry picking stats doesn't make your case for you.

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This is why democrats are worse than Republicans.

Well, the figures I was using were for rich-to-working class, but the same change in ratios would apply between the rich and the middle class, since middle class incomes have stagnated as well. They would be lower ratios at all times, of course, because middle class incomes are greater than working class ones, but the same change should be visible. I guess we would need to define what we mean by "middle class income," though, since that's a fairly loose term.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. If income ratios start at one point and end up at another point, haven't incomes been redistributed? Please clarify your question.

You were referring to the paydown of the national debt, and asserting that that was the reason we left the Breton Woods arrangement (highly dubious assertion, by the way). The public debt came from before the Golden Age, from World War II mostly. The Golden Age provided the prosperity and consequent tax revenues required to pay it down. Mostly this was done under Truman and Eisenhower.

What "very expensive mess" are you talking about? If you're referring, again, to the federal deficit, that ballooned under LBJ and Nixon, but it was because of the Vietnam War more than anything else. Also, it doesn't begin to compare with the debt load taken on starting with the Reagan years, which happened after the Golden Age was over.

If you're referring to something other than federal debt, you need to explain what you're talking about.

That was also when we began having severe economic downturns again, the first one being in the early 1980s. There were some recessions during the Golden Age, but they were mild and short-lived by comparison either to the pre-Depression downturns (which they used to call "panics") or those occurring since 1981.

Why?

U.S. unemployment statistics are somewhat understated by the government.

US unemployment soars to 8.5%.; 13 million jobless | Home >> Other Sections >> Breaking News

"WASHINGTON (AP) – Unemployment zoomed to 8.5 percent last month, the highest in a quarter-century, as employers axed 663,000 more workers and pushed the nation's jobless ranks past 13 million. The hard times were only expected to get harder — a painful 10 percent jobless rate before long.

The current rate would be even higher — 15.6 percent — if it included laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have had to settle for part-time work because they can't do any better."

I was unable to quickly find statistics for under-30 U.S. unemployment, but it stands to reason and should be expected that young people will suffer worse from this than people in their prime, regardless of nationality. If the real unemployment figure in the U.S. overall is at 15.6%, logically it should be somewhat higher for those under 30.

I have asserted that CEOs of big publicly-traded corporations are among the richest people in the U.S. Do you deny this? If you don't, then I wasn't "cherry-picking." If you do, please explain on what basis you deny it.

Then you're not understanding what we are asking you to provide. You have said that there is an unacceptable distribution of wealth in the USA (a "maldistribution") that is the root to our economic problems. Quantify this maldistribution of wealth and the conditions/range/threshold which make(s) it 'bad'. And, provide sources.

I have to agree with Matt.

Option #4. This was a systematic failure from the consumer, to the CEO, to the legislator. Fiscal Responsibility was thrown overboard by all three parties.

When you financially overextend, you get immediate gratification, but then responsibility kicks you in the ass pretty soon.

On to the next bubble......I really doubt our societal habits will change much.

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The world could use more Stan Ovshinsky's

Back to the original question.

I blame the guy holding the checkbook...

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For those who have fought to defend it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know...



If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

I blame republicans.

Because they're old. And white. And republicans!

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"The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit."
- Milton Friedman

"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it."
- George Orwell

But Democrats are also old and white, except for the president, who's old and black. Well, and even he's half white. (I specify "old" from your perspective, Grasshopper, not mine.)

Admittedly they're not Republicans.

uh huh.....

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

This unequal distribution presumes there is an finite supply/amount of money and whats out there to large degree, is being withheld from others by folks who have a lot of it , kept in the grasp of those CEO’s whomever, we have had this out before.
Money is out there , up for grabs, for anyone with the motivation smarts and ambition to succeed, gracchus doesn’t think that’s good enough you see, if they don’t, it has to be because there something wrong with the “system”….no, there’s is nothing wrong, what’s wrong is he believes that people should be awarded for lack of overall effort to get past the station they have arrived or lack of will to get them to a place they may aspire too, because his premise is they are being kept down somehow. Its circular do do.

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

No its not about being kept down or not. Its about the simple fact that an economy requires working and middle class people to run it. When it is run in their interests, with a view to helping them provide for themselves and their kin, to have enough money and enough leisure time, then the benefits to the nation far outwiegh that situation where their money and leisure are squeezed over decades while such benefits accruing to the richest are heightened.
There is no mention or desire to reward people for lack of effort, unless of course we speak of the idle rich, who will always benefit from the growth of real wages.

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Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Guess who?

I'm no economic or business whiz, so I just hang out in these threads and ask questions when I don't grasp a concept. When I see someone saying over and over that the cause of all of our economic problems is this bad distribution of wealth, I want to know what this distribution of wealth is/how it's measured and what conditions make it bad.

We are told over and over it's a simple concept, and we are even given some figures without source and when pushed for a source, given the pretense that an intelligent poster did not understand what was asked.

So, as I see nothing concrete or even close to a gel with respect to these sorts of claims, I have no option but to dismiss it as well (especially since it's all supposed to be such an easy solution). So, I'm with you; it's do-do, until I see something more substantial.

I have been told that 95% of the wealth in this country is in the hands of 1% of the people. Some of that 1% are the ones calling for redistribution, so I would think they are not referring to THEIR portion of it that should be redistributed.

Given our market if all the money were divided out equally amongst every American, it would not be long until it was all back in the hands of the same people. Some would invest, some would buy land, some would buy clothes and jewelry, and some would put it up their noses.

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That's all well and fine, but my question is still what are the conditions of the distribution of wealth (and what is the distribution of wealth) that make it responsible for our economic situation, as we have been told so many times in this thread and elsewhere on the forum.

The supply of wealth IS finite. That should be obvious. There is no such thing as infinite wealth.

You've never really understood it, though. You always seem to approach the matter from the individual rather than the collective perspective, and talk about what an individual person can do to rectify his or her circumstances, and how it's their own fault if they don't. It's not that I don't agree with that, it's that it has nothing to do with what's under discussion. I'm not saying, "oh, poor working class people being held down." (There's some validity to that -- but it's NOT the point here.) I'm saying something much more technical and very different.

Money moves in a circle, not a straight line. It goes out from investors to workers, who produce goods; then it goes back to the investors from the workers in exchange for the goods that were produced. But if the workers aren't paid enough to buy all those goods produced, the system breaks down. The investors can't hog an ever-increasing share of the proceeds without having exactly that result: depression of consumer demand, breaking of the circle of money, and crashing of the economy.

This has NOTHING TO DO with fairness, or opportunity, or whether people are living well. It has to do with whether the economy is working or not. You have yet to provide an answer that shows you even understand what I'm saying. You always seem, instead, to be answering something else that I'm NOT saying.