US income inequality continues to grow

[Millhouse]

(08-03-2018, 12:22 AM)Benton Wrote: I’m open to ideas. So far the most prevelant is increasing the minimum wage (which I’m against) or providing more educational opportunities (which generally aren’t feasible to someone working 2-3 jobs).

One idea I read about is to start reducing or eliminating IP laws when it comes to certain things like medicines. For example instead of fictional company 'Rippinyouoff Corp' having exclusive manufacturing rights to a certain drug that is widely used, that drug can be shared by whomever to be manufactured which would create competition for said drug to drive it's price down. If done on a wide scale of drugs, then a lot of people would save money. And the original company that came up with the drug would still get their kickbacks as it's their patent. Thats the theory at least in a nutshell, as there is a lot more to it due to yearly patent costs etc.

Personally I am open to this idea for medicine, because medicine is one thing that should openly shared on how to produce, imo. Other areas though I would be hesitant about overall. It really would depend on it being a necessity vs. luxury.

Another idea is to figure out ways to discourage imports into the U.S. from countries with cheap unskilled labor. One reason income inequality has risen since the 1970s is globalization of our companies, and importing goods from places like China using cheap labor so companies here can make big profits from. I think most experts would agree on that, but they also would say the flipside is that those countries income inequality gap is being shortened as poorer people are making more money there.