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Barack Obama has been in office for nearly eight years during the milder Great Recession. Median income adjusted for inflation is lower than it was when he was inaugurated.
Barack Obama has been in office for nearly eight years during the milder Great Recession. Median income adjusted for inflation is lower than it was when he was inaugurated.
Not really.An interesting video on the wealth distribution in the US
Any effort to achieve a more equatable distribution of wealth and income will require a larger, stronger, and better financed government than most Americans desire.
The Story of Social Democracy
With the onset of the industrial revolution, liberalism emerged as the first modern
political and economic ideology. As capitalism spread across Europe during the
nineteenth century, liberalism provided both an explanation of and a justification for the
transformations the new system brought. Liberals promulgated a faith in progress, a
belief that the market could deliver the greatest good to the greatest number, and the
conviction that states should interfere as little as possible in the lives of individuals.
Indeed, there was such a match between the times and the ideology that the nineteenth
century has often been called the “age of liberalism.”
Yet by the middle of the century the bloom was already off the rose. The
practical consequences of early capitalism—especially the dramatic inequalities, social
dislocation, and atomization it engendered—led to a backlash against liberalism and a
search for alternatives.
The video is a distortion of reality and propaganda by those who are envious and jealous because they lack all the combined abilities to be as successful.
It is not the US's wealth, it is the individual's wealth.
Yes. Everything which followed your declaration was hogwash.Hogwash.
All irrelevant and absurd nonsense.How many millionaires have you seen on a deserted island, Robinson Crusoe?
You cannot even earn an income all alone - you need a Market-Economy, consisting of (in the US) a great number of your fellow citizens. And, them, you owe nothing? The market-economy was made just for you?
Especially unacceptable is taxation of "your money" that pays for "give-aways" ... ?
Any effort to achieve a more equatable distribution of wealth and income will require a larger, stronger, and better financed government than most Americans desire
Or we simply change the tax system to be fairer for all.
Replace most taxes with a land value tax and watch the wealth gap shrink. No need for bloated bureaucracy.
Not a good idea.
Granny that bought her House in San Fran or Manhattan 50 years ago for 40-50k and how has a house valued at 500k or so would not be able to afford this.
Nor would that family farm for 3 generations that has had industry or condos creep up around it.
You would end up with the very wealthy buying it all up and then just passing on this land value tax to people who leased it because they couldn't own it themselves.
For practical reasons, like preventing economic shock, it would have to be phased in over a period of several decades.
Not really all that difficult to do though. Most states already have a property tax, so it's just a matter of each year increasing the tax percentage on the land value, while lowering other taxes, such as the tax on the structures, and reducing property taxes on automobiles, and reducing sales tax. So what if Granny's property tax goes up by $500 this year, if she saves $500 on other taxes - doesn't harm her one bit.
Also, a system doesn't have to be perfect to be worthy of implementing, it just needs to be better than the system (or lack of one) that it is replacing.
I would be more concerned that granny's property tax would go up by thousands. a lot of property in that area has a fixed rate, based on the original purchase price. they have tax controls on it.
I suppose we can create whatever type of system (tax rate, grandfather/mother clauses, etc) that we desire to create.
Like I mentioned, such change in tax schemes would probably need to be made over a period of decades, so the shift could be very little on an annual bases. Or we could also offset those kind of situations by increasing SS payments, etc. There is no end to the number of offsetting policy changes or creativity level of policy shifts. I'm sure that your concern wouldn't be the only concern and that you wouldn't be the only person concerned about these types of concerns.
Another option is that if she couldn't afford this apparently expensive piece of property, she could always sell her house and move to a less valuable place, pocketing a few hundred thousand dollars along the way. That looks like an attractive option to me.
Any effort to achieve a more equatable distribution of wealth and income will require a larger, stronger, and better financed government than most Americans desire.
PULL THE OTHER LEG
Your hindsight needs a new pair of glasses. You are not telling the whole story in that remark.
In 2009, after having been handed on a platter the Great Recession by a Dunderhead PotUS, Obama immediately had a Dem-Congress pass the ARRA-Spending Bill, which spiked a burgeoning Unemployment Rate at 10% - see that fact here.
Total ARRA-spending was a wee-bit less than half a trillion dollars and across Federal agencies, as described here by the CBO (scroll down to chart of spending breakdown by Federal department).
Because Obama demonstrated that he could not "walk on water" and stop-dead the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression, the American electorate in 2010 (that is, the 57% of voters who bothered to show up at the polls) turned the HofR over to the Replicant Party. Who promptly started axing all Stimulus Spending based upon the spurious notion - in a full-fledged recession - that constraining the National Debt was priority.
I submit that their intent was far more malicious. They specifically desired high-employment for the 2012 elections to oust Obama. Didn't work, did it?
But how many of our fellow-Americans continued to suffer unemployment. Look at the Employment-to-population Ratio from 2012 to 2014. Four long years of Employment Stagnation at about 25.5% of the nation's workforce, before employment started to regain momentum in 2014. (The HofR is still controlled by the Replicants.)
And it was all Obama's fault?
Yeah, right - now pull the other leg ...
Of course Congressional Republicans tried to make Obama fail. They also tried to make Roosevelt fail. They failed with Roosevelt. They succeeded with Obama.
When the home team keeps losing the fans do not begin to root for opposing teams. They want the home team to get a better coach.
The American electorate screwed Obama, when they stayed home at the 2010-midterms and gave the Replicants what they wanted most. Control of the HofR, from which they could deny him all Stimulus Spending without the least bit of compassion for the very large number of unemployed in a full-blown Great Recession. Four more years of unnecessary zero-employment growth just so they could screw Obama.
The mind boggles at the crassness of a political-party that would show such disrespect for the well-being of the American people.
By contrast, two years after the election of Franklin Roosevelt the unemployment rate had declined by 6.7%.
With Keynesian Stimulus Spending (suggested to Roosevelt by Keynes himself in 1932), yes it finally started coming down.
But it was the spending on WW2 that actually brought it back to "normality".
Great Depression Unemployment Stats:
View attachment 67201321
And it was Stimulus Spending that Obama wanted to re-employ (as he had done in 2010 with his ARRA-bill) in 2011 when the unemployment rate was at 9% that the Replicants in the HofR refused!
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Oh right, seize it from those that earned it and give it to those that did not.
Nevertheless, until the attack on Pearl Harbor Congressional Republicans prevented sufficient government spending, employment, and upper class taxation.
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