The Rich Get Richer

The American Conservative ^ | September 25, 2006 Issue | James Kurth

[P-40]

But immigration policy is only one example of the most serious problem with increasing economic inequality

Leaving the door wide open for an unabated influx of extremely poor immigrants does not help this 'wealth gap' one bit now does it...

[Sam's Army]

Tell us A. Pole: What was your motivation to leave Eastern Europe and come to the US?

[Sam's Army]

Please add me to your greedy Kulaks ping list.

[A. Pole]

Was there a dollar cutoff for what they consider to be rich?

If you and your descendants can live in comfort without work and you can hire other people to serve you, then you are rich.

Rich as a class are those who are independently wealthy, having enough wealth to perpetuate their status without giving back to the society. If they do work and contribute they do it because they like it and not because they have to.

[laweeks]

Ah yes! Because the rich have theirs, I don't have mine. The eternal struggle. A zero-sum game. Karl Marx would be proud.

[GeorgefromGeorgia]

The "poor" in our country are generally the ones that dropped out of school at age 16, had babies while teenagers, and have little or no skills or ambition.
Educated and/or skilled persons are doing very well. This country has so much opportunity. That same "The Economist" magazine has had articles on how may days it takes to start a new business (the list the countries by days). The USA is at the top of the list, something like 1-2 days. Some countries (more socialist or corrupt) can take months even years. The USA has more of a free market economy that rewards high achievers with intelligence or skills. Other countries strive for income redistribution and more economic equality. This approach punishes achievement and encourages slackers.
This kind of article is written by socialists with Utopian visions that government will make things right. WRONG, government tends to screw it up.

[Sam's Army]

"...live in comfort without work"

Like Royalty? Or do you mean like Kim Jong-Il and Castro?

All the "Rich" folks I know of actually work.

[andy58-in-nh]

Excellent point. There is also the fallacy of "groups over time": the "top 1%" of any group in 1979 was not the same group of people in 1980 - much less 1985 or 1990. Using quintiles or quartiles enhances the error, as people regularly move in and out of artificially-designated groupings. In terms of income, mobility is largely upward in the US, with lower-income people regularly replaced by new immigrants and young first-time workers.

Socialists love artificial statistics because they allow them to ignore real world observations. "Poor" people in the US tend to own cars, refrigerators, microwaves, entertainment systems, computers, etc., and live in heated apartments or houses. In Africa and Asia, "poor" people fight over scraps of food and live in mud huts. And there are many millions of them because their governments are dictatorships and their economies are socialist.

[Tailgunner Joe]

If the rich are getting richer, and the poor, if they are not getting poorer in real terms are not seeing their fortunes rise at comparable rates, this would seem to mean that the increasingly opulent consumption by the rich will have as its counterpart the increasingly austere consumption by the poor, and even by the now shrinking middle class. Eventually, the newly poor will not be able to earn enough to maintain their previous levels of consumption. Consequently, some goods produced will not be consumed, thus there will be fewer goods produced, there will be fewer producers or workers, there will be fewer goods consumed, and so on.

Karl Marx called this "immiseration." Its never actually happened.

It does mean, however, that our government will have to tax American citizens more in order to finance its debt.

But instead they cut taxes and this guy still complains about it. Some people you just can't please.

[1rudeboy]

I skimmed this twice looking for Mr. Kurth's solution to his perceived increase in income inequality, and didn't see it . . . anybody?

[Lancey Howard]

Ever since the exhaustion of the civil-rights movement in the 1970s, the way many young African-American males have actually contested growing economic inequality has been with crime—mugging, robbing, and raping the rich (and not only the rich but much larger numbers of the middle class and the poor as well, including vast numbers of other African-Americans).

However, the theology (more accurately, ideology) of political Islam is permeated with egalitarian norms and sentiments, and Islamists are often animated by egalitarian resentments and anger as well. Islamists speak frequently about the injustices and exploitation inflicted by the rich upon the poor, and by the rich West upon the poor Muslim world. “Social justice” is a central concept in most Islamist programs. They have their own way of claiming, as the Communists claimed in an earlier era, to speak for “the wretched of the earth".

Huh. So THAT explains crime and terrorism - - it's "the income gap".

[Paleo Conservative]

This article is not even remotely "conservative."

I could swear I was reading an article from The Nation.

[A. Pole]

Tell us A. Pole: What was your motivation to leave Eastern Europe and come to the US?

Why do you ask?

[antiRepublicrat]

most obviously the current regressive tax policies of the Bush administration

Regressive tax policies? A gas tax is regressive, since both a rich guy and a poor guy with cars that get 20 mpg pay the same tax, and it's a larger percentage of the poor guy's income.

Lowering the tax for the rich so that it's not as high above that of the poor as it was before is not regressive, it's making it less progressive.

And that's not even all Bush did. I earn less than the max, so I get thousands in child tax credits taken off my taxes. People above that maximum income don't get that break.

[A. Pole]

All the "Rich" folks I know of actually work.

Do they have to work?

[dfwgator]

Our "poor" are still better off than many middle class people in Europe.

You want poor people, go to Haiti.

[Paleo Conservative]

"Poor" people in the US tend to own cars, refrigerators, microwaves, entertainment systems, computers, etc., and live in heated apartments or houses. In Africa and Asia, "poor" people fight over scraps of food and live in mud huts. And there are many millions of them because their governments are dictatorships and their economies are socialist.

Compare the standard of living of the "poor" in the US to the lower middle class in most third world countries.

[RockinRight]

The funny thing is...if you divide US Household income by 5. Take the bottom 5th and top 5th of incomes. Those two groups vote majority Democrat. The three in the middle lean Republican.

[A. Pole]

The funny thing is...if you divide US Household income by 5. Take the bottom 5th and top 5th of incomes. Those two groups vote majority Democrat. The three in the middle lean Republican.

This is a very interesting point. So the people who experience the stratification the most are opposed to it. And those who are more in the middle they do not mind it.

[sandbar]

I can't wait to hear all the 'yeah for the rich' here, but I don't want to think of this country without a middle class.