U.S. income inequality

[Party]

Oh so we want to get political on the intel issue. Trust me the intel guys are fine. What Trump was picking on,and rightly so,are the politicized hack that tailored their intel to what the current president wanted to hear. Some army intel guys at CENTCOM threw fits because what they were reporting to their bosses was being whitewashed by those above them to fit a narrative.

Funny many trash GWB because of the reason he used to invade Iraq was that the intell guys, like those in England,told them Hussein had wmd's. Anyone find them yet? So they were wrong then but right now huh?

Sounds really familiar doesn't it. Does Benghazi ring a bell....anyone....anyone?

[akga80]

There is no non allied nation that's is a formidable threat to the US, firstly 90℅ of the military is combat experienced, further more we have the draft, we have more people than all of them except one, and that being China, but due to communism they're still living in 1993. As far as Trump or Hillary goes it the lesser of two evils, Trump doesn't owe anyone anything. He held job interviews for his staff and cabinet, they were chosen because they were qualified, not because of the good ol' boy system. Hillary has been in politics since the early 90s what has she changed. I'm with party America is great because everyone one has the same chance, you can go from pauper to millionaire if you have the will power, if you want to be a deadbeat and mooch of the government dime don't complain about it be greatful that you can.

[domnus]

The Trump plutocracy will take a while to affect people in the US. When it does, the rest of the world will watch on amazed.

China and Russia have this all sussed out. China is of infinitely more importance to Australia, and the part of the world where we live and to whom we sell our goods.

Trump rubbishing the highly competent intelligence services (and probably the best in the world) is deadly serious. Without these competent men and women, and without their dedication, America will be the exact opposite of great again. Anyone who knows the intel business will tell you that those who have been rubbished will become more susceptible to recruitment ploys from the West's adversaries. Their morale will suffer and all the blowhard generals itching for a war somewhere will not suffice. And if you Americans really expect the trickle down effect to work, come over here and I will sell you the Sydney harbour Bridge for your week's salary.

Both America's friends and enemies know that electing Trump was the biggest mistake you ever made. You have four years to find out.

I beg to differ. Hillary would have been a worse choice. I'm not particularly proud of Trump as a choice but I think many Americans such as myself (and apparently at least Party) are sick of the noncontributors in the US living as well on gov. checks as many of the hard working citizens who do the right thing, follow the rules and see our tax dollars go to supporting those that don't.
It is in the matter that I feel Trump can leave a positive legacy as a President. And lets be honest, that's what he wants. If Trump will give relief to the small business owners who have suffered tremendously the last decade, wages will increase slowly but jobs will be created. Small business owners are the backbone of the US economy for job creation and they have been treated poorly by the Fed gov.
Too many people in the US feel they deserve a high paying job rather than going out and earning one.

[Pegasus]

None so blind as those who will not see.

[closed224]

I'm willing to bet I work harder, longer, smarter and more educated than 90% of you who claim I can get where Trump is. Trump got more of a start from his pimping grandfather who also sold road kill in his restaurants than I can earn in my whole life. The laws don't help us small business men, we just fight harder to give it to the rich. Our money goes in ever increasing rates to the already rich. The lesser of two evils is still evil. I live in this country. I work my balls off. I have an excellent IQ, and I learn everything possible about all my vocation choices. I will never be wealthy. I will never be allowed to make what Trump is allowed to make. His choices are all from the ol' boys club. Not the political ol boys club, the ultra wealthy suck everything out of the huddled masses ol boys club. This country could be great, but we choose to hate each other, we choose to act like some deserve more than others. Trump a carpenter? Shit!

[closed224]

Also pretending other industrialized countries are not involved in sucking money out of many and concentrating it in the hands of the few is insane. Where are the Rothschild's from? This is a world wide trend. It will continue as long as we look down on the lower classes and not up at the thieves who perpetuate this trend. Are some lazy, systems suckers? You bet. Do they take more from us then the thieves at the top? Not even close. No amount of socialization will ever equal the amount being taken by the corporate thieves writing the laws. If each of us have half our earnings to the man next to us it would be less impact on our wallets than the bank, insurance companies, lawyers take from us. Then we justify these takings by blaming some lazy guy? Shit I wish Trump and his ilk would get lazy. Then they wouldn't work so hard stealing everything. Productivity should be what is compensated for. Working hard should be a measure of compensation. Sheep herding, or other vocations that feed people, should be honored, and compensated. Declaring bankruptcy to limit personal asset exposure for developing casinos should not even be comfortable let alone compensated.

[Tamora]

It's dead easy to make money when one has money.

When I had my business I could have a buyer make a few hundred if not a thousand pounds in an hour making a few phone calls procuring electronic components while I was drinking a cup of tea and sitting on my arse. That didn't happen every hour of the day, but it certainly happened with regularity.

I had the bank manager tripping over me offering me large personal overdrafts on my current account at minimal rates and credit cards with zero interest. Borrowing money became very cheap and very easy to obtain.

The little guy working his backside off has no chance of that kind of assistance unless he's prepared to sacrifice a large portion of his life to get there and has some luck along the way.

Obviously, the trouble with banks is that they'll give you an umbrella until it starts raining!

[Pegasus]

A lot of you guys just wrote of 90% of the WORKING US population as lazy and/or stupid.
Doesn't lead one to be impressed does it.

[Frog]

Great input from both sides of the ocean and fence...

Both sides have a great many truths that I hope all of us here at the gym consider.

IMHO the politicians and businessmen who hold 90% of the wealth will never allow rules (tax or otherwise) to change in such a way that bring more Americans into the middle or upper middle class.

We all see what is going on, the creation of the welfare system wasn't to help the needed, but a way of controlling a specific demographic. By pandering to this demographic you control and expand your personal and financial agendas.

We here at this site are thinkers. Politicians on both sides hate that, we cause problems and could ultimately discrupt their agendas. Adding to my theory, I came from a broken home the daughter of a German immigrant with broken English. My parents divorced (father was air force) when I was 7 and left me with my Mom in Utah which is a very chovanistic male dominated closed minded state at the time. I wore second hand clothes and we lived on instant noodles and only bought canned goods from a scratch and dent store. I remember mom buying a box of Lucky Charms for $1.00 from there that had been cut open with a box cutter by mistake. I thought it was Christmas.

Continuing on...
We lived in the ghetto,because that's all she could afford and I was the ONLY blond haired blued girl in the school. I was targeted daily for assault and I was in 4 the grade. Yes 4th grade!!!! Those little monsters learned that kind of hatred from their parents. Those kids all got discount housing, free school breakfast and free lunch. They bragged about it. Mom qualified for discount houseing and I could have qualified for breakfast and lunch, but she refused to take assistance. She wanted to make it on her own!!!!

Continuing....
I am proud of the woman I am today and my mother is a very big reason for that. I'm 44 and have earned below poverty level into six figure salary over my lifetime to date. Could have qualified for assistance, but refused out of pride. I never had babies because when I was in those years I could not afford them so I chose not to and now I'm just to old. When my income changed, so did my life style. How many of today's youth, disenfranchised, disabled, uneducated, uninformed people would ever dream of changing their lifestyle to match their income or improve themselves in such a way earn a wage to match their lifestyle.

We the people will never make the money the top 90% make, our capitalist society would never allow that to happen. But, then what do we need that for? We the people are not trying to control anyone with our wealth. I believe most of " we the people" want to be comfortable and content with someone we love living a comfortable quality of life?

Continuing....
my level of happiness and contentment. At 44 I live in a 40' 5th wheel that I bought used, I pretty much stole it at $12,000 and found it on Craigslist. I paid someone $500 to relocate it 400 miles to my bf's property in south Florida. we rent out the house and live in the trailer. This sacrifice has allowed me to go back to school again to try and better myself. I am very happy living in a clean modest environment, with someone who makes me smile and laugh. I am working hard to make the changes in my life that will allow me additional freedoms and quality of life I desire.

How many people do we know that will sacrifice for ultimate long term gain? I don't know very many.

[DarkMedic]

Before get into the technical aspects of US income inequality, look at how the wealth of the richest people on the planet affect these statistics. The 8 wealthiest people (that have been quantized) own $426,000,000,000. This is more than the entire poor population of the world combined. Most of them are from the US. This already sets a huge income gap with the rest of the world, of course there will be a huge gap when compared to a mere 300 million American citizens.

How does the US compare to global income? 180,000,000 American citizens are high income globally. 102,080,000 are high-middle income. 22,330,000 are middle income. 9,570,000 are low income. 90% of Americans are above the global middle income.

Between 1979 and 2007, paycheck income of the top 1 percent of U.S. earners exploded by over 256 percent. Meanwhile, the bottom 90 percent of earners have seen little change in their average income, with just a 16.7 percent increase from 1979 to 2014.

In this same time period (1979-2014) from the same sources, the upper middle class in US went from 13% of the population to 30% of the population. Why should people doing lesser income work become wealthier over time without moving upward in skillset and level of service? People generally work for a wage that is worth it to them. If you start from the absolute bottom (like I have) what good does it do you when the income is artificially forced upward? What this does is make it harder for people starting off with little advantage, little technical skills, little education from getting jobs. Entry level jobs are typically available to anyone because the wages are low, and companies can risk giving someone with no background a job. People who don't speak english or who have zero job experience simply will not be worth hiring at an inflated pay. Employers will become more selective and you will only see a larger disparity in dirt poor and middle income. I know you didn't suggest this, but you are comparing the bottom earners, who do low income, entry level jobs. They need the availability so that they can get a leg up and move forward. The availability comes from a low wage. The fact of the matter is we have more and more people moving from low income to upper middle income, even if the low income workers' wages stagnate. Why should low skill work be incentivised by inflating wages?

More than 10,000 of Bill Gates' employees alone have become millionaires working for Microsoft. They employ 100,000 people. The people working on physically building products and providing services do not make the amount investors and high income earners do because they are not engaging in thousands of transactions and not taking near the amount of financial risks. How do you even achieve income equality without penalizing the people taking these risks and making these transactions? The high income class also pays most of the taxes and employs most of the country.

We all see what is going on, the creation of the welfare system wasn't to help the needed, but a way of controlling a specific demographic. By pandering to this demographic you control and expand your personal and financial agendas.

Continuing....
I am proud of the woman I am today and my mother is a very big reason for that. I'm 44 and have earned below poverty level into six figure salary over my lifetime to date. Could have qualified for assistance, but refused out of pride. I never had babies because when I was in those years I could not afford them so I chose not to and now I'm just to old. When my income changed, so did my life style. How many of today's youth, disenfranchised, disabled, uneducated, uninformed people would ever dream of changing their lifestyle to match their income or improve themselves in such a way earn a wage to match their lifestyle.

We the people will never make the money the top 90% make, our capitalist society would never allow that to happen. But, then what do we need that for? We the people are not trying to control anyone with our wealth. I believe most of " we the people" want to be comfortable and content with someone we love living a comfortable quality of life?

Absolutely correct. It is a way of achieving leverage over the population

Same here. I started in a ghetto with nothing. I was dirt poor and had to have my middle school intervene and give me clothes because the little I had were dirty and full of holes. The appearance was "inappropriate". I had no parents around and was taught nothing on how to make it in life. I started with fast food and moved up from there. Most kids these days will fuck themselves by trying to disproportionately live as if they are wealthy. Nice cars, nice clothes, expensive habits yet no financial stability. This group will always vote for the candidate offering something or pushing redistribution.

It is unlikely to make it into the top level income in one lifetime from the bottom, but ANYONE here can make into the upper middle class or higher by taking basic responsible financial decisions. In fact, if you get a simple job, avoid racking student debt, avoid kids out of wedlock you WILL get there. Making it into the 1% usually takes a couple generations and people move through this with family support. Families typically move into the 1% together although the opportunities are there for individuals. If we are talking about the top 10% though, anyone with little skill or creativity can simply avoid debt, get a basic job, and invest a portion of their check per month into an index fund and easily have over a million dollars by the time they retire. If they decide to learn more, they can diversify or find other opportunities and easily surpass this.

The gap exists here because the high earners make a lot, not because the lower earners make little. The poor here still live well. The higher income of someone else is completely irrelevant to their situation. I grew up dirt poor and still had it better than most people around the world.

Exactly.

In my country if you work hard and learn and are willing to learn you will do well. What we have had here over the last 2 decades is the Europeanization or the socialism that this country never had.

The carpenter worked hard and he was proud of what he did. His customers noticed, he was in demand, and hired other guys to work and he was there to make sure it was done to his standards. He became wealthy.

Seeing that others tried to copy but yet they had no work ethic. They did jobs that were good enough, at least for them, but they would never be wealthy as they had no drive to be good. Yet they think they deserve what the other guy made.

A person would get a low level minimal wage job and with no desire to improve themselves declare how unfair society was because they could not live off minimum wage. They wanted a living wage and yet not work harder or learn more to become more valuable and deserve more.


We have developed such a social safety net here that really no one goes without. The poor here still have I phones; not bad. Without working much or hard at all they have much what the rich have. If a rich guy and a poor guy get run over in the street they are both taken to the same hospital, both treated by the same doctors and yet the poor guy ends up not paying for anything.

No one in this country really goes without. In a western city those living on minimum wage clamored to get a big raise so that they would have a living wage. It was set at 15 bucks an hour. In that city 420 small businesses and resturants went out of business because they couldn't afford to pay that much. Well that didn't help anyone did it. Those that still had jobs realized that working full time gave them too much money to qualify for government assistance so they cut back on their hours to part time this way they could work less and still end up living well because they had food stamps and welfare.

You see there has been a change in attitude where we have large segments of the population that want to work less, have 6 weeks paid vacation and retire at age 50, like Europe.

We have welders that make over 100 k and are in great demand and yet no one seems to want to go to school to learn how to weld. Living in mom's basement or collection government handouts s fine.

The inequality here exist because of people and their attitudes reinforced by some very liberal folks that say it's fine. Anyone in this country can make a good buck if they want to and are willing to work.

Exactly.

They're pinning their hopes on Trump.

I see he's already affected Toyota's share prices knocking 2% off the value of the company within minutes after tweeting if Toyota build a factory in Mexico he will impose a high import tax.

Taxing importations is a foolish and failed policy. One, it reduces imports obviously. Free trade will serve us better. When you reduce imports you get less exports. Also, what jobs are you really saving? You are saving zombie factory jobs that we can never be competitive in. You know what happens when you "bring those jobs back"? A nice factory job moves into town. It pays well and offers benefits. You say "shit, why should I go to school and be an engineer when I can work at the factory for $15 an hour and benefits?" This does not serve us. This is typically where we are forced to learn a new skill which betters us and the country. To artificially reduce this is foolish. It is better for the economy to seek efficiency and leave those jobs to people who can be competitive while we focus on producing advanced technologies that can only be produced here. Have great engineers and developers designing the products and pay someone else to make the cheap plastic parts. We need to be competitive and foster special and unique skillsets. It's similar to boosting government jobs. Sure, workers will love it because there will be more jobs, but it is inefficient and is not going to provide a real return to the economy. Why should we have our citizens making plastic spoons and dollar tree toys?

My overall point is this. Low income workers. You can stay there and still fare better than most of the planet. Or you can take advantage of the endless opportunities here and create more for yourself and your families. Our income gap is because there are so many people making an ass ton of money. There is also a lot of people content with staying at entry level positions and never moving upward. These positions may not be exploding in wage increases, but the number of people exploding upwards from there is high.

I typed this in a huge rush and avoiding detail on any of it, so I would appreciate questions and disagreements so I can more specifically clarify what I mean.