Let's talk about income inequality

[Beaker]

(06-09-2015, 07:47 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Fred, you keep dodging the point that I am making.  Ask yourself why these people cannot afford the items that you listed.  I'm relatively certain that if they learned some skills, to improve their employability, they likely could find a job that would afford them those things.

I know it is much easier to just ignore facts and say "People are poor because the system has failed them", but just because it is simple does not mean it is reality.

[fredtoast]

(06-09-2015, 07:47 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Fred, you keep dodging the point that I am making.  Ask yourself why these people cannot afford the items that you listed.  I'm relatively certain that if they learned some skills, to improve their employability, they likely could find a job that would afford them those things. 

I, and many more people here, have directly addressed that point over and over again.

And all you do is ignore the facts and say "Well, I just think they are all lazy".

There are not enough well paying jobs for everyone to have one.  A large portion of the uninsured are people who are employed.

Your claims defy all logic and reality.  And you are the one who keeps dodging this fact.

[fredtoast]

(06-09-2015, 08:02 PM)Beaker Wrote: I know it is much easier to just ignore facts and say "People are poor because the system has failed them", but just because it is simple does not mean it is reality.

Beaker, you seem to be a lot smarter than sunset.

Do you believe that there are enough well paying jobs for every person in the country to have one.  And I mean a job that pays enough to live on and purchase health insurance.

Do you really believe there are millions of unfilled positions just waiting for people to work hard enough to fill them?  If that is true then why are so many people unable to find these jobs?

[Belsnickel]

I thought this might be relevant to things here a little: https://www.facebook.com/TheRealMikeRowe/posts/1001750199835123:0

Quote:Hey Mike

Your constant harping on “work ethic” is growing tiresome. Just because someone’s poor doesn’t mean they’re lazy. The unemployed want to work! And many of those who can’t find work today, didn’t have the benefit of growing up with parents like yours. How can you expect someone with no role model to qualify for one of your scholarships or sign your silly “Sweat Pledge?” Rather than accusing people of not having a work-ethic, why not drop the right-wing propaganda and help them develop one?

Craig P.

Quote: Hi Craig, and Happy Sunday!

I’m afraid you’ve overestimated the reach of my foundation, as well as my ability to motivate people I’ve never met. For the record, I don’t believe all poor people are lazy, any more than I believe all rich people are greedy. But I can understand why so many do.

Everyday on the news, liberal pundits and politicians portray the wealthy as greedy, while conservative pundits and politicians portray the poor as lazy. Democrats have become so good at denouncing greed, Republicans now defend it. And Republicans are so good at condemning laziness, Democrats are now denying it even exists. It's a never ending dance that gets more contorted by the day.

A few weeks ago in Georgetown, President Obama accused Fox News of “perpetuating a false narrative” by consistently calling poor people “lazy.” Fox News denied the President’s accusation, claiming to have only criticized policies, not people. Unfortunately for Fox, The Daily Show has apparently gained access to the Internet, and after a ten-second google-search and a few minutes in the edit bay, John Stewart was on the air with a devastating montage of Fox personnel referring to the unemployed as “sponges,” “leeches,” “freeloaders,” and “mooches.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/…/daily-shows-jon-stewart-bu…/

Over the next few days, the echo chamber got very noisy. The Left howled about the bias at Fox and condemned the one-percent, while the Right shrieked about the bias at MSNBC and bemoaned the growing entitlement state. But through all the howling and shrieking, no one said a word about the millions of jobs that American companies are struggling to fill right now. No one talked the fact that most of those jobs don’t require an expensive four-year degree. And no one mentioned the 1.2 trillion dollars of outstanding student loans, or the madness of lending money we don’t have to kids who can’t pay it back, educating them for jobs that no longer exist.

I started mikeroweWORKS to talk about these issues, and shine a light on a few million good jobs that no one seems excited about. But mostly, I wanted to remind people that real opportunity still exists for those individuals who are willing to work hard, learn a skill, and make a persuasive case for themselves. Sadly, you see my efforts as “right wing propaganda.” But why? Are our differences really political? Or is it something deeper? Something philosophical?

You wrote that, “people want to work.” In my travels, I’ve met a lot of hard-working individuals, and I’ve been singing their praises for the last 12 years. But I’ve seen nothing that would lead me to agree with your generalization. From what I’ve seen of the species, and what I know of myself, most people - given the choice - would prefer NOT to work. In fact, on Dirty Jobs, I saw Help Wanted signs in every state, even at the height of the recession. Is it possible you see the existence of so many unfilled jobs as a challenge to your basic understanding of what makes people tick?

Last week at a policy conference in Mackinac, I talked to several hiring managers from a few of the largest companies in Michigan. They all told me the same thing - the biggest under reported challenge in finding good help, (aside from the inability to “piss clean,”) is an overwhelming lack of “soft skills.” That’s a polite way of saying that many applicants don’t tuck their shirts in, or pull their pants up, or look you in the eye, or say things like “please” and “thank you.” This is not a Michigan problem - this is a national crisis. We’re churning out a generation of poorly educated people with no skill, no ambition, no guidance, and no realistic expectations of what it means to go to work.

These are the people you’re talking about Craig, and their number grows everyday. I understand you would like me to help them, but how? I’m not a mentor, and my foundation doesn’t do interventions. Do you really want me to stop rewarding individual work ethic, just because I don’t have the resources to assist those who don’t have any? If I’m unable to help everyone, do you really want me to help no one?

My goals are modest, and they’ll remain that way. I don’t focus on groups. I focus on individuals who are eager to do whatever it takes to get started. People willing to retool, retrain, and relocate. That doesn’t mean I have no empathy for those less motivated. It just means I’m more inclined to subsidize the cost of training for those who are. That shouldn’t be a partisan position, but if it is, I guess I’ll just have to live with it.

Mike

PS. The Sweat Pledge wasn’t supposed to be partisan either, but it’s probably annoyed as many people as its inspired. I still sell them for $12, and the money still goes to mikeroweWORKS. You can get one here, even if you’re not applying for a scholarship. http://profoundlydisconnected.com/foundation/poster/

[Beaker]

(06-10-2015, 02:20 AM)fredtoast Wrote: Beaker, you seem to be a lot smarter than sunset.

Do you believe that there are enough well paying jobs for every person in the country to have one.  And I mean a job that pays enough to live on and purchase health insurance.

Do you really believe there are millions of unfilled positions just waiting for people to work hard enough to fill them?  If that is true then why are so many people unable to find these jobs?

I don't believe there are ever enough jobs. If there were, we would not have any unemployment. The hitch is what you call well paying. It is my belief that more (not all) people could have jobs, yet some refuse to work at jobs they feel are below them. I think we will never have 100% employment due to things like mental illness, and yes, even motivation. But the job market has evolved, and there has been a fundamental refusal by many to evolve with it.

Now all that said Fred, if you want to pick out something in this post to confront, here it is. I believe it doesn't start with government, but at home. I believe parents need to truly believein the value of an education, and that has to be instilled in children through their parents. I have first hand experience with too many parents who don't really care. Too many parents who see no value in a well rounded education/curriculum. Comments like "my child doesn't need to take science, she's never going to be a scientist anyway" are short sighted. Having a well rounded education allows students to have the skills necessary to choose whatever field they wish to go into. But more importantly, it allows them to CHANGE fields later when they discover they don't like what they do.

Gone are the days of a 30 year job at the factory. In fact, the majority of people will hold multiple jobs throughout their lives. It is more common now for retirees to have held a series of different jobs at say 7-10 year stretches than it is to find someone who worked at the same place their entire career. So it goes back to having acquired multiple skill sets as you grew up. The apathy for education by parents and students today is astounding.

Notice in this whole post I have not blamed laziness. I think people say they want to work, but like I said, what they want to do, and what they are willing (or qualified) to do are often two different things. I think that is the fundamental gap in keeping more people employed in the modern work world.

[fredtoast]

(06-10-2015, 09:07 AM)Beaker Wrote: Notice in this whole post I have not blamed laziness. I think people say they want to work, but like I said, what they want to do, and what they are willing (or qualified) to do are often two different things. I think that is the fundamental gap in keeping more people employed in the modern work world.

So you are saying that there are plenty of well paying jobs sitting empty right now because people are will to put in the work to get them?

I agree with everything you said about people needing to improve themselves.  But my point is that there are not a lot of empty positions for these people even if they did improve their education.

[Beaker]

(06-10-2015, 11:21 AM)fredtoast Wrote: So you are saying that there are plenty of well paying jobs sitting empty right now because people are will to put in the work to get them?

No. I am saying the employment landscape is changing. More often than not now, jobs are transient. There may not be the long term jobs out there for everyone, but there are jobs, that when combined, or transitioned end to end can earn a person a decent living. The name of the game now and towards the future is adaptability. You have to have more than one skill set, you may have to do jobs in short stretches (say 5-7 years each) one after the other, and you have to be flexible and go where the work is. I think many people are stuck in the old mindset of a job for life. That's becoming more and more rare. But is simply the employment climate as the job market changes.

[SunsetBengal]

I saw this, and found it interesting, and most appropriate for this thread.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/randy-hall/2012/04/18/study-undermines-liberal-medias-inequality-meme


Members of the “mainstream” press have worked hard to promote what President Barack Obama calls an “income-inequality crisis” based on studies claiming that the middle class is shrinking and got left behind in the greatest economic expansion in modern American history.

However, a new, more comprehensive investigation indicates that the earlier research isn't wrong, it's just “incredibly, massively incomplete.”

Obama has been saying, and the liberal media have unquestioningly parroted, comments like this:

---

What drags our entire economy down is when the benefits of economic growth and productivity go only to the few, which is what’s been happening for over a decade now, and gap between those at the very, very top and everybody else keeps growing wider and wider and wider and wider.

 

The president's claims are based on the initial research on income inequality from 1913 to 1998 by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, and an updated report by Saez. According to them, median American incomes rose just 3.2% from 1979 through 2007, with all figures adjusted for inflation.

Citing the same study, Washington Post Opinion Writer Harold Meyerson stated in a March 27 column  that while the Occupy Wall Street movement isn't known for precise economic analysis, the group's “sloganeering provides a stunningly accurate picture of the economy” with the gap between the top 1 percent and the other 99 percent growing ever wider.

While never putting a premium on economic equality, America has always prided itself on being the preeminent land of economic opportunity. If all of this nation’s wealth is captured by a narrow stratum of the very rich, however, that claim is relegated to history’s dustbin.

 

However, a new study  entitled “A Second Opinion on the Economic Health of the American Middle Class” by Cornell University researchers led by Richard Burkhauser, found that when properly measured, the median household income rose 36.7%, not 3.2%.

So why the significant difference? The Cornell economists state that Piketty and Saez made many “odd choices” about what to measure and how to measure it. They focused on something called “tax units” rather than households, a move that ignores the impact of couples who live together, kids who move back in with their parents after college, and senior parents who live with their adult children.

And that's not all. In the earlier study, Piketty and Saez also ignored the value of all government transfers, including welfare, Social Security, and other government provided cash assistance, along with the value of health-care benefits and tax returns.

“ So the tax and regulatory polices of the past three decades did not lead to stagnation for the middle class at the hands of the rapacious rich,” James Pethokoukis stated in his article on the new research.

Claims to the contrary—such as those made by Obama, the Occupy movement, and many liberal economists—never really passed the sniff test of anyone who lived through the past few decades. And now we know why:

Even more interesting is an article written by Alexander Eichler  for the Huffington Post Website that has as its headline: “ Income Inequality Worse Under Obama Than George W. Bush.”

That means the rising tide has lifted fewer boats during the Obama years—and the ones it's lifted have been mostly yachts.

 

Ed Morrissey stated in his post  on the new study that “the bottom line is clear: there is no income-inequality 'crisis.' At best it’s a misunderstanding of the data based on incomplete and irregular analysis, and at worst, it’s a demagogic lie intended to divide Americans along false lines. In fact, it’s most likely both.”

- See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/randy-hall/2012/04/18/study-undermines-liberal-medias-inequality-meme#sthash.zQioXLtt.dpuf

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(06-11-2015, 05:34 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Even more interesting is an article written by Alexander Eichler  for the Huffington Post Website that has as its headline: “ Income Inequality Worse Under Obama Than George W. Bush.”

That means the rising tide has lifted fewer boats during the Obama years—and the ones it's lifted have been mostly yachts.

The vast majority of the article suggests income inequality doesn't exist and is nothing more than liberal media bias until they suggest income inequality does exist and is worse under Obama. 

Does income inequality exist?  According to NewsBusters the answer is yes and no simultaneously. 

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/inequality/index.html

That is a link to the Census Bureau's information regarding income inequality.



On another note, 1) why did you need to change careers and 2) why didn't you move to where the jobs were instead of changing careers?

[SunsetBengal]

(06-11-2015, 06:38 PM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: On another note, 1) why did you need to change careers and 2) why didn't you move to where the jobs were instead of changing careers?

I needed to change careers because of the banking crash.  I was a self-employed skilled tradesman for over 20 years, when the banks crashed, the construction work went down the tubes.  So, like any reasonable minded individual, I learned a new job skill in a profession that appears to be secure.

And, I actually did end up moving.  So, now I am home most every night, rather than living out of a suitcase on the road.

[SunsetBengal]

This is interesting, as well. 

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/07/07/internal-democratic-polls-prompt-obama-to-abandon-income-inequality-message/



It is not yet clear how Democratic activists and voters will react to Obama and Democrats’ abrupt muting of the income inequality message. However, one group of Obama supporters–Silicon Valley–may take solace in Obama’s backpedaling on the issue. Experts [/url][url=http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-Technologies/dp/0393239357/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391201494&sr=8-1&keywords=second+machine+age]say the technology industry, which overwhelming favored Barack Obama, is actually the “main driver” of income inequality, because it allows young tech entrepreneurs to score huge financial fortunes in record time, thereby widening the growing gap between rich and poor.  

[SunsetBengal]

Hey everybody, LA just raised the minimum wage to $15/hr!!

Looks like a lot of Los Angeleans will be out of work soon..

http://www.youngcons.com/liberals-in-la-vote-to-raise-the-minimum-wage-then-this-immediately/



Advocates of minimum wage laws usually base their support of such laws on their estimate of how much a worker “needs” in order to have “a living wage” — or on some other criterion that pays little or no attention to the worker’s skill level, experience or general productivity. So it is hardly surprising that minimum wage laws set wages that price many a young worker out of a job.

[fredtoast]

(06-11-2015, 07:53 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Hey everybody, LA just raised the minimum wage to $15/hr!!

Looks like a lot of Los Angeleans will be out of work soon..

http://www.youngcons.com/liberals-in-la-vote-to-raise-the-minimum-wage-then-this-immediately/



Advocates of minimum wage laws usually base their support of such laws on their estimate of how much a worker “needs” in order to have “a living wage” — or on some other criterion that pays little or no attention to the worker’s skill level, experience or general productivity. So it is hardly surprising that minimum wage laws set wages that price many a young worker out of a job.

Demand drives employment. 

Businesses will raise prices before they cut jobs and turn away customers. 

[SunsetBengal]

(06-11-2015, 09:00 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Demand drives employment. 

Businesses will raise prices before they cut jobs and turn away customers. 

You should have read the article.  It said that 59% of businesses surveyed said that they would make capital investments in mechanization to eliminate human jobs.

So much for the "fight for $15" mantra.  The thing is, if those folks clamoring for an increase in minimum wage spent just half of the energy that they use to demand more on improving their employability skills, they could likely merit a job paying much more than $15/hr. 

At what point does the light go on, to the idea that there are many that want a living wage for doing very little in terms of productivity?

[fredtoast]

(06-11-2015, 11:47 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: You should have read the article.  It said that 59% of businesses surveyed said that they would make capital investments in mechanization to eliminate human jobs.

Which they will do even if minimum wage is not increased.

[fredtoast]

(06-11-2015, 11:47 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: At what point does the light go on, to the idea that there are many that want a living wage for doing very little in terms of productivity?

That light came on a long time ago.  I even addressed it in a previous post.  The problem is that you don't care about facts and don't even bother to read what I write.  

You are so completely brainwashed that you can't even have a serious discussion on this issue and listen to what other people actually say.  All you are capable of doing is repeating the same empty rhetoric over and over again. 

When does the light come on for you that there have ALWAYS been lazy people that don't want to work.  That is nothing new.  That is not the reason the middle class is being squeezed out of existence.

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(06-11-2015, 07:12 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: I needed to change careers because of the banking crash.  I was a self-employed skilled tradesman for over 20 years, when the banks crashed, the construction work went down the tubes.  So, like any reasonable minded individual, I learned a new job skill in a profession that appears to be secure.

And, I actually did end up moving.  So, now I am home most every night, rather than living out of a suitcase on the road.

What caused the banks to crash?  How much did it cost to go back to school?  How much did it cost to move?

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(06-11-2015, 07:15 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: This is interesting, as well. 

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/07/07/internal-democratic-polls-prompt-obama-to-abandon-income-inequality-message/



It is not yet clear how Democratic activists and voters will react to Obama and Democrats’ abrupt muting of the income inequality message. However, one group of Obama supporters–Silicon Valley–may take solace in Obama’s backpedaling on the issue. Experts [/url][url=http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-Technologies/dp/0393239357/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391201494&sr=8-1&keywords=second+machine+age]say the technology industry, which overwhelming favored Barack Obama, is actually the “main driver” of income inequality, because it allows young tech entrepreneurs to score huge financial fortunes in record time, thereby widening the growing gap between rich and poor.  

How does that allow anyone to score huge fortunes?

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(06-11-2015, 11:47 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: You should have read the article.  It said that 59% of businesses surveyed said that they would make capital investments in mechanization to eliminate human jobs.

So much for the "fight for $15" mantra.  The thing is, if those folks clamoring for an increase in minimum wage spent just half of the energy that they use to demand more on improving their employability skills, they could likely merit a job paying much more than $15/hr. 

At what point does the light go on, to the idea that there are many that want a living wage for doing very little in terms of productivity?

Automation has been eliminating human jobs for decades.  Why do companies out source jobs overseas?

[JustWinBaby]

Income inequality is a global phenomenon.  While the 1% take an increasingly outsized share of that gain, it's dwarfed by the transfer of wealth from our poor/middle class to the poverty class of other countries. 

Some would say that's the greatest aspect of global capitalism, while others would say it's the greatest failing.  The problem, as I've said before, is that the purchasing power lags the earning power - which is a disproportionate transfer of consumer surplus to the wealthy and, in fact, is a consumer deficit (in the short-term).