It is.
Posted on 01/21/2007 1:18:35 AM PST by neverdem
Why are America's superrich suddenly fretting about income inequality?
What's hot for 2007 among the very rich? A $7.3 million diamond ring. Safari in Tanzania. Oh, and income inequality.
Sure, some leftish, Democratic-leaning billionaires like George Soros have been railing against income inequality for years. But increasingly, centrist and right-wing billionaires are starting to fret about income inequality and the fate of the middle class.
In December, Mortimer Zuckerman wrote a column in U.S. News & World Report, which he owns. "Our nation's core bargain with the middle class is disintegrating," lamented the 117th-richest man in America. "Most of our economic gains have gone to people at the very top of the income ladder. Median income for a household of people of working age, by contrast, has fallen five years in a row." Channeling Barbara Ehrenreich, he noted that "Tens of millions of Americans live in fear that a major health problem can reduce them to bankruptcy." Unbound, Zuckerman concluded with a plea for universal health insurance.
Wilbur Ross Jr., No. 322 on the Forbes 400, has echoed Zuckerman's anger over the Dickensian struggles faced by middle-class Americans. "It's an outrage that any American's life expectancy..." --snip--
In other words, if middle-class Americans continue to struggle financially as the ultrawealthy grow ever wealthier, it will be increasingly difficult to maintain political support for the free flow of goods, services, and capital across borders. In addition to Lou Dobbs Democrats, we'll have more Lou Dobbs Republicans. And when the United States places obstacles in the way of foreign investors and foreign goods, it's likely to encourage reciprocal action abroad. For people who buy and sell companies, or who allocate capital to markets all around the world, that's the real nightmare.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
the worrying on the part of the super rich is just a minority opinion
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Bingo. A thriving middle class is what prevents communism or fascism from taking shape.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Bingo. A thriving middle class is what prevents communism or fascism from taking shape.
Yep. Also serves to prevent a large population of very, very cranky people.
The middle class are the ones who would bear the burden of it though. I would imagine that the fortunes of those mentioned in the article is very well sheltered.
"It was the middle class of the bourgeoisie merchants, artisans and traders."
Yes, you are right. I need to be more careful about the term "middle class".
Agree, all must shoulder the blame.
"As long as the government continues to pursue one-sided "free" trade policies with slave labor nations such as China, continues to permit open immigration from third world nations, and persists in running an education monopoly that puts political correctness ahead of providing skills the culture and the middle class will continue to decline......"
Thank you for posting this. The American middle class was born of the struggle between the 19th century robber barons and their sweatshops. The Democratic party made its bones by supporting this struggle well into the mid 2oth century.....the outcome of which has been a standard of living for the average joe unparalleled in all the history of the world. The things we all take for granted...an 8 hour workday,...vacation, the very concept of retirement and healthcare all flow from the roots of those struggles. We all have "protected" status as US citizens ....that includes access to a host of benefits we all take for granted and consequently scarcely see. Each illegal immigrant erodes that status, each illegal immigrant becomes another "disposable" human being that society "benfits" from not having an obligation to their well-being. The consequence is that society begins to regard those of us who created it as an implicit burden as we age and falter in our abilities to feed it.(i.e continue to pay taxes)
People are sayiung class when they mean middle income range. Not the same, at all. Incomes change, but classes are usually codified into law.
This was posted by a Freeper a while ago, seems relative to our discussion and deserves to be reposted.
Time for a history lesson. Traditionally, economists, historians, and sociologists (e.g. William Lloyd Warner) divide capitalist societies into five classes:
1. The Nobility: hereditary rulers; owners of ancestral estates and properties, supported by taxation of property-owners
2. The Aristocracy: minor nobility, the clergy, the landed gentry, military officers, and peers of the realm; supported by salaries, rents and income from the state or derived from properties
3. The Bourgeoisie: the "middle class": town-dwelling commoners who support themselves by means of property through commerce and trade. Includes professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.), small business owners, skilled tradesmen and craftsmen, artisans, artists, writers, small property owners, and civil servants.
4. The Proletariat: the "working class": people who own no property and support themselves solely by trading their labor for wages.
5. The Underclass: beggars, itenerants, petty criminals, drug dealers/smugglers, pimps, prostitutes, private soldiers and sailors, the mentally ill, the disabled, most entertainers
In the U.S. we obviously have no nobility as such; instead we have "old money" (e.g. the DuPonts) and political families (e.g. the Tafts, the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, the Bushes) whose vast networks of connections and substantial blue-chip investment portfolios enable them to operate at the top levels of power. The "aristocracy" in our society consists of those who have achieved extreme wealth and/or fame in their own right: media celebrities, tycoons, pro athletes, and the nouveau riches in every city and town. Our bougeoisie is more or less the same as in earlier times: a middle class of small business owners who make their livings by entrepreneurial activity. The working class in America consists of those who derive all their income from wages alone. And our underclass still consists of beggars, itenerants, petty criminals, drug dealers, private soldiers and sailors, the mentally ill, and the disabled. (The pimps, prostitutes, and entertainers all got promoted to the Aristocracy.)
Class is not a measure of how fine a person one is. There are plenty of noble people among the lower classes, and it's well known that scum tends to rise towards the top of any social soup. It is also not based upon one's income or net worth. Class is a status determined by how one gets their daily bread. Those who derive their income from capital (property) are either "nobility/aristocrats" (the upper class) or bourgeois (middle class). Those who derive their income from wage labor are the working class. And those who live hand-to-mouth, on the government dole, or by crime make up the lowest class. Of course, there are exceptions -- there are plenty of disabled in the middle class, and many of our soldiers and sailors are small businessmen when not on active duty -- but in very broad terms our society still has the same five-class structure it has had since the end of feudalism.
Just know that this description came from Karl Marx. I am a historian, and I do not accept it. Mobility, not stratification is the hallmark of American society.
It is.
Yes, ma'am. We have MOBILITY, NOT nobility:
The Poverty Hype by Walter Williams (January 4, 2006)Despite claims that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, poverty is nowhere near the problem it was yesteryear -- at least for those who want to work. Talk about the poor getting poorer tugs at the hearts of decent people and squares nicely with the agenda of big government advocates, but it doesn't square with the facts.
Dr. Michael Cox, economic adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Richard Alm, a business reporter for the Dallas Morning News, co-authored a 1999 book, "Myths of Rich and Poor: Why We're Better Off Than We Think," that demonstrates the pure nonsense about the claim that the poor get poorer.
The authors analyzed University of Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics data that tracked more than 50,000 individual families since 1968. Cox and Alms found: Only five percent of families in the bottom income quintile (lowest 20 percent) in 1975 were still there in 1991.
Three-quarters of these families had moved into the three highest income quintiles. During the same period, 70 percent of those in the second lowest income quintile moved to a higher quintile, with 25 percent of them moving to the top income quintile. When the Bureau of Census reports, for example, that the poverty rate in 1980 was 15 percent and a decade later still 15 percent, for the most part they are referring to different people.
Cox and Alm's findings were supported by a U.S. Treasury Department study that used an entirely different data base, income tax returns. The U.S. Treasury found that 85.8 percent of tax filers in the bottom income quintile in 1979 had moved on to a higher quintile by 1988 --
66 percent to second and third quintiles and 15 percent to the top quintile.
Income mobility goes in the other direction as well. Of the people who were in the top one percent of income earners in 1979, over half, or 52.7 percent, were gone by 1988. Throughout history and probably in most places today, there are whole classes of people who remain permanently poor or permanently rich, but not in the United States. The percentages of Americans who are permanently poor or rich don't exceed single digits.
It doesn't take rocket science to figure out why people who are poor in one decade are not poor one or two decades later. First, they get older. Would anyone be surprised that 30, 40 or 50-year-olds earn a higher income than 20-year-olds? The 1995 Annual Report of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that "Average income tends to rise quickly in life as workers gain work experience and knowledge. Households headed by someone under age 25 average $15,197 a year in income. Average income more than doubles to $33,124 for 25- to 34-year-olds. For those 35 to 44, the figure jumps to $43,923. It takes time for learning, hard work and saving to bear fruit."
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas report listed a few no-brainer behaviors consistent with upward income mobility. Households in the top income bracket have 2.1 workers; those in the bottom have 0.6 workers. In the lowest income bracket, 84 percent worked part time; in the highest income bracket, 80 percent worked full time. That translates into:
Get a full-time job. Only seven percent of top income earners live in a "nonfamily" household compared to 37 percent of the bottom income category.
Translation: Get married. At the time of the study, the unemployment rate in McAllen, Texas, was 17.5 percent, while in Austin, Texas, it was 3.5 percent. Translation: If you can't find a job in one locality, move to where there are jobs.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas report concludes, "Little on this list should come as a surprise. Taken as a whole, it's what most Americans have been told since they were kids -- by society, by their parents, by their teachers."
-- from THIS page
Given the rate of savings and investments, including insurance, I do not think there would be very many people who fit your "Working Class" definition. Likewise, considering the numbers of retired persons, often living on a government sponsered pension and SSI, your "Underclass" doesn't look too valid, either.
Social and economic change has brought us a long way from the 17th Century, and a Class-system description which might have fit Charles I's England is not going to cover 21st Century America very well.
VietVet
Which is a big reason why it is so expensive.
Precisely
Thanks! Now if we could drive around with this for the next few months, maybe we could scare away some support.
"A Capitol Hill police officer was ordered to inform the Clintons that everyone was ready and waiting [for the 1993 inaugural festivities]. The policeman knocked and opened the door of the holding room. He immediately shut it, beating a hasty retreat. Hillary Clinton was screaming at her husband in what was described as 'uncontrolled and unbridled fury.' ... The Capitol Hill police and the Secret Service quickly conferred about intervening if it appeared the president's life might be threatened by the first lady!"
-- former FBI Special Agent Gary Aldrich, Unlimited Access, HERE: http://snipurl.com/184ts
On November 24, 2001 former DEMOCRATIC congressional aide Chris Matthews told former DEMOCRATIC congressional aide Tim Russert (AND his nationwide TV audience) on MSNBC that former DEMOCRATIC pollster Pat Caddell had said,
"The Clintons -- they're 'white trash,' and I can say that because I'm from Florida."
-- from this page: http://freedomkeys.com/slimeball.htm
Also see this:
http://boortz.com/nuze/200701/01222007.html#hillary
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