The rich are getting richer, the poor, well you know....

[Peter1469]

By doing a little digging I found the source Oxfam report: https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository...-210119-en.pdf (.PDF).

And I found their notes on methodolgy: https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository...-210119-en.pdf (.PDF).

Most of the 28 pages on methodology concern analyzing billionaires. What I'm looking for is data to support the claim "3.8 billion of the world's poorest got 11% poorer." And I found it:



In short, they're guessing: "however, as no country has a single comprehensive source of information on personal wealth, and some others have few records of any kind, different methods are employed to estimate wealth figures when missing. As a result, wealth estimates show different quality levels."

So I went to thier source, Credit Suisse: https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/...rt-2018-en.pdf (.PDF). After extensive search through the document, I can find no supporting data there. Basically, what I see is a report that says wealth increased at a rate of 4.6% and that the percentage of wealth at the top 1% grew faster than that of the rest. I don't see any claim the lowest 50% lost anything, they just have a lower percent--but you can't trnslate that into dollars and say they lost something. And, as already pointed out, even the Credit Suisse data is guesswork without a solid foundation of data.

The entire purpose of the Oxfam report is stated succinctly on the title page: "Universal health, education and other public services reduce the gap between rich and poor, and between women and men. Fairer taxation of the wealthiest can help pay for them. " In short, redistribution.

The old socialist argument was the workers are exploited. The workers abandoned them to bargain with the capitalist for better wages, benefits, conditions, etc. So socialist now turn to the income inequality argument. That argument is losing out to the face the global poverty rate has been in sharp decline.



Anyway, there's the source of data. I open to any factual disagreement. Do your homework.

Yes, the income inequality argument is a canard, particularly in the developed world. We had several threads about this when Thomas Piketty published his comprehensive "Capital in the 21st Century." We noted several flaws with his work (although it was the best presentation of inequality of wealth ever published). Flaws included mistaking wealth for capital, and failing to add government assistance to the poor in his figures.

Here is one thread. If you put into the search bar up top, "Thomas Piketty Capital" many other threads pop up.

[Peter1469]

That's exactly what we have been saying. Raising taxes on billionaires and corporations is pointless, they will always dodge them. Ending tax write-offs, subsidies, and government contracts would fix most of the bs. I have never understood why the government would hire a contractor to make a plane for, say, the air force, when the air force could just make it themselves. When the government doles out contracts to companies, the companies become vital infrastructure themselves. As vital to our security and government operation, we then cannot allow them to fail, and they will always demand more inflow of tax money every quarter. The corporate model does not jive with the good of the government or the people. This is why companies are so heavily subsidized, and those subsidies have to continue to grow every year.
I think corporations themselves are an abomination on the economy. Real businesses owned by actual American citizens are at their mercy at every turn. Many of these large companies are not even based in America, yet under Citizen's United are given the same rights as an American citizen. If corporations cannot be outlawed, at least multinational one's should be. I bet you could pick any one large multinational corporation, and they enjoy rights given to multiple country's citizens, and they care not one iota about those countries or their people and values.
Again, if I were to propose that illegal aliens or foreign actors had a Constitutional right to influence our elections, I would be rightly laughed at for being dumb. But all of these far-righties here are essentially saying that same thing, then telling us we are wrong.
I also think it is wrong when a family can pay $1,000 in federal taxes, then because of something like child credits, can get a return from the IRS for $3,000. This is basically subsidized child bearing, getting paid to make more future taxpayers. LOL. All subsidies are wrong.
In 2017, Corporations paid 205 Billion in taxes. That was collected from 5.9 million corporations listed in the US. The total for all tax revenue was 6.41 Trillion. That means corporations in the US paid 0.032% of all taxes. Yet they have 99% of all the wealth. And it's not just all 5.9 million corporations, just the fortune 500-type companies.
If we took away subsidies and tax exemptions from companies, and get rid of write-off loopholes to charities and expenses, and make it illegal for an American business to store it's money and assets overseas in tax havens, then we would all be paying our fair share. The poor would no longer be supporting these wallet-eating monsters, and our national debt would start decreasing rapidly.
Some say that these big companies shouldn't have to pay 99% of the taxes. But if they make 99% of the money, isn't that fair? And isn't it unfair if we have to make up for their externalities out of own pockets?
I also think when a company does something criminal to our markets through fraud, or something criminal to our environment through negligence or on purpose, they should get hit with the same RICO statutes as any criminal conspiracy organization. They should be imprisoned, fined, and all of their assets should be seized and auctioned off. For example, if a group of board members in a company decide it's better to illegally dump toxic chemicals in a river used for drinking water by millions of citizens than to pay to dispose of it properly, how is that different than mob members conspiring together to commit a crime? But today's corporations just get fined, then they appeal, and several years later the fine gets reduced by 90%. Then they list it as a business expense on their taxes and write it off. Crimes on top of crimes, to no end. The fines all look great in the headlines, but no money is paid thanks to fancy tax math.
People need to wake the f*ck up.

Subsidies are used to encourage behavior. And many nations subsidies child birth: modern nations with comprehensive government assistance programs cannot maintain those programs if their are not enough young workers paying taxes to feed those programs. Bad demographics are why the US social security and Medicare programs are in danger of running out of money in the next generation or two.

[Peter1469]

OK, what number would you be happy with? 70 hours a month? Not including time spent snorting coke off hookers on a yacht? Or playing golf with politicians looking for their next government grant for the studies on the mating behavior of grasshoppers? Actual board time and office time would be very low. Anyways, the point I was making to DG was he was small-time compared to the real criminal billionaires, and DG has undoubtedly worked his ass off way more than any billionaire, and doesn't even have 0.1% of their economic worth. It's not just about being motivated and working hard. We would all be billionaires if that were the case. Nobody works like the poor and middle class in America. Except Mexicans and other migrant workers who work the fields bent over all day in the full sun. For pittances. They would be billionaires before all of us. They are so damn motivated they get a visa to travel to another country, with a foreign language, crazy white people with no morality or family values, and leave their own families behind for several months every year, just so they can send home what an average poor American makes in a month.
Your argument's make no sense, and neither does @DGUtley .

Your entire post is reactionary bull $#@!. None of it is based in reality.

[Orion Rules]

The only accomplishments that I hold to any value, are all accomplishments that you would never be able to understand or appreciate. I have seen the accomplishments of the wealthy and in the end they are not accomplishments worth noting at all. Most of the wealthy people gain their fortune by harming or ripping off others. It is the name of the game. I consider those actions to be reprehensible. We will never agree or see eye to eye MRV.

The truth is that on our last day as we draw our last breath. We will see that nothing is ours, and that it was all for not.

Accomplishments end in a little box of ashes. But our deeds and actions of the heart go on.

No one is better than anyone else. We are all just living beings who share the same troubles. We all need the same things, we all feel the same kinds of emotions. We are all born taking our first breath, and we will all die, taking our last breath. Nothing is ours. We are born empty handed and we leave empty handed. Everything in-between is conjured in the mind of man. But in the end the conjuring is shown to us for what it is. This has been happening since the dawn of time.

Accomplishments are defined by the quality of your heart, and what you have done for others in this lifetime. Our true legacy is not engraved in our belongings, but on the impressions that we made on the hearts of others.

[donttread]

This imbalance costs lives of millions of people who can not afford healthcare. Very sad.

A problem for humans at least since the advent of stationary farming . To me it's like the survival instinct simply won't turn off in some people and they keep making, taking, hoarding more than they can ever use. All known economic systems to date ( when applied to large populations) seem to advance these people, the ones with the broken off switch on their survival instinct, to leadership.
The first system that effectively stops doing that will be the next advancement in how to organize a society.

[Peter1469]

A problem for humans at least since the advent of stationary farming . To me it's like the survival instinct simply won't turn off in some people and they keep making, taking, hoarding more than they can ever use. All known economic systems to date ( when applied to large populations) seem to advance these people, the ones with the broken off switch on their survival instinct, to leadership.
The first system that effectively stops doing that will be the next advancement in how to organize a society.

To punish go-getters? Seems the opposite of meritocracy.

[Chris]

Let's try a more contemporary example. My mother's family had almost no money during the dirty thirties, but they had a farm, so they had everything they needed. They didn't consider themselves poor, just short of cash. The poor people were those who didn't have the means to feed themselves, because they couldn't grow their own food and didn't have livestock.

What is considered real poverty in the world is the inability to feed oneself. Let's examine the reason for that kind of desperate poverty. For many it's lack of any work that pays enough to buy food. For others it's living in places that can no longer produce food and the fact that they cannot leave. For others still, it's because of corrupt governments that are in league with the very wealthy to rob the people of the value of their labor, the degree of which if deployed in a hunter-gatherer society would result in well-fed people.

So scream Marxism all you want but the economic system that converts labor to yet another commodity does not price work really based on effort but on scarcity. Thus those who break their backs every day are generally paid the least, yet in a hunter-gatherer society, they would be successful, contributing members of the tribe. Today they starve (in societies where there is no welfare) unless they become criminals and/or warlords which is basically what created all of the old money in the world that eventually created the tools of capitalism, including the fractional-reserve, debt-based monetary system - the ultimate con game of all time. It's an economic system built on IOUs and currency manipulation.

Poverty is being alleviated by dreaded wealth redistribution, either because of social programs or the flight of industry to the poorest parts of the world. However, because of the nature of capitalism, the 1% will continue to benefit the most from a system that is fundamentally based on fairy dust, schadenfreude, manipulative advertising and BS.

You can imagine all the possibilities yuo want but it means little unless you reference real data.

No one screamed Marxism. I simply pointed out your narrative was a typical Marxist one.

Actually poverty is being aleviated by creating opportunities of entrpenuership and investment. As economist Hernando de Soto Polar argues, one of the sure ways to do this is to establish onwership of property even the poorest live on and in and use that as collateral to invest in a business. Another sure thing is reduction of red tape in establishing a business.

[Chris]

I do nothing and am nothing of the sorts. The reality is that despite the odds many of us have gone out and tried to make a better life for our families rather than sit and whine how unfair the system is. You take that as bragging, it is not. What we are saying is “Go, you can do it”. Sure, attack me but you either totally miss the point or have lost the argument and now resort to ad hom attack’s.

How you saying you worked hard for what you have becomes twisted into bragging is absurd.

[Orion Rules]

A problem for humans at least since the advent of stationary farming . To me it's like the survival instinct simply won't turn off in some people and they keep making, taking, hoarding more than they can ever use. All known economic systems to date ( when applied to large populations) seem to advance these people, the ones with the broken off switch on their survival instinct, to leadership.
The first system that effectively stops doing that will be the next advancement in how to organize a society.

Khnum broke off certain parts of Egypt for the LORD because the high-priest class had infected mankind with feeling as if they were not much higher than the last dollar they lost because murderers had descended upon the throne of King Tutankhamun.

Revelation two, Numbers one.

"The Book of Nehemiah"

[Chris]

Dave is just telling us what we all know, that hard work pays off...