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Posted on 11/05/2011 12:46:45 PM PDT by MichCapCon
“No matter your thoughts about the Occupy Wall Street movement, the protesters are right in at least one respect: The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer.”
Variations on this statement have been repeated in dozens of blogs, commentaries and even news reports over the past several weeks. The claim comes via a Congressional Budget Office analysis showing that incomes for the top 1 percent of Americans grew by 275 percent between 1979 and 2007, while the lowest 20 percent saw their inflation-adjusted incomes grow by “only” 18 percent.
...
The actual empirical evidence cited has been about what has been happening over time to statistical categories turns out to be the direct opposite of what has happened over time to flesh-and-blood human beings, many of whom move from one category to another over time.
IRS tax return data shows that individuals in the bottom one-fifth back in 1996 experienced income growth of 91 percent by 2005. In contrast, individuals in the highest one-fifth saw their incomes increase just 10 percent over the same period. Incomes of households in the top 5 percent and 1 percent actually declined, by 7 percent and 24 percent, respectively.
In the late 1970s, Steve Jobs was trying to expand a struggling computer company. Bill Gates was writing code and just beginning to start working on a personal computer. And one of the founders of Google, Sergey Brin, had just arrived as a 6-year-old immigrant from the U.S.S.R. These are individuals who did not enter that top 1 percent until many years later — in the process displacing former “one percenters.”
(Excerpt) Read more at michigancapitolconfidential.com ...
Why are you linking to your blog when the article is available at Mackinac.org — which you cited as the source, but linked to your blog? Are you the original author?
Here’s the CORRECT link to this article at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy:
The Rich Are Getting Richer; So Are the Poor
http://www.mackinac.org/15970
Of course they are, corporate fascism (Also known as “Socialism” aka “Crony Capitalism”) keeps tightening the noose on competition until only a few large corporations will exist that the government can easily take over. There are so many regulations the little guy can no longer open a business and make something worthwhile and compete—legally. So the reality is most people will become serfs in homes they cannot afford (artificially high in price through regulation and subsidy), paying student loans, artificially high (through subsidy, ala Pell Grant), and working for a mega corporation (usually receiving subsidy, like GE, bank bailouts, etc.), until all the small businessmen become an afterthought. It’s already happeneing at an ever-accelerating pace.
So, lets just tax the rich for more money and give the poor the money that the rich are being taxed for.
After all, it's strait out of the communist manifesto.
Question: Do you EVER leave comment when you post things here? On your posting history I see NOTHING, but links to your blog. You could at least stick around for a bit and engage in discussions, but I’m guessing that’s not your goal in posting...
I’m not one to usually complain about this, but given the fact that you cite the source as the MIPP and then link to your blog behind that title is rather odd, and strikes me as being VERY deceptive — THAT is what upset me, personally.
Also, this isn’t exactly “news” as it’s an EDITORIAL/OPINION column.
I am so sick of this tax the rich crap. Yeah, as some LA Times editor recently noted, the top tax rate in 1959 was 91%. What he did not mention is the bottom rate was 20% beginning at zero. In other words, after deductions, everyone paid at least 20%.
Correction: I made a mistake on the acronym. It should be MCPP - no “I”.
“The Rich Are Getting Richer; So Are the Poor”
Great news for the poor; they are getting richer too.
I agree, Taxing the rich isn’t an answer (taxes never are), that’s how we got the oppressive tax system we have. The elitists convinced the poor and middle class to support and income tax ton the rich, (they simply incorporated) and foisted on the middle class, which took away capital for the small businessman.
The solution is to destroy the tax code and regulations that keep American industry down. How did the “rich” get rich. By regulating everyone else (through taxes, EPA regulations, and lobbying) until they became stagnant. There’s no need to tax the “rich.” Clear the board so entrepreneurship can do what it’s supposed to, and the money siphoned to elites will quickly dissipate as everyone else becomes more wealthy.
I realize that a lot of people think that everyone (or most everyone) in this country is lazy. No, that’s not true. People are not lazy, they are unwilling to jump through the ridiculous hoops imposed on them to make an honest wage. You need a license for everything, and must pay a slew of taxes at every level, and pay for inspections of all kinds, while a few mega multi-national corporations buy off our politicians and flip the American people the bird.
Great news for the poor; they are getting richer too.
"A rising tide floats all boats."
Right now our "economic tide" is out and not coming back anytime soon.
Regards,
GtG
I beg to differ on that point considering inflation over the last couple of years. Of course, I’m just speaking from my family’s own personal experience - I guess it might not be indicative of all people, but this commentary seems to make some rather broad generalizations.
When one takes into account that in the early 90s my husband made $20,000 more per year than he makes now doing the same job, not to mention that our health insurance premiums are 3xs what they were just 2 years ago (thanks obamacare), I wouldn’t say the “poor” are getting richer by any means. In fact, 20 years ago my family WASN’T considered among the “working poor”, but we are now...
Inflation makes a HUGE difference in how well people can live on any given income, and for those “on the brink” that difference is quite challenging.
PS - I’m NOT arguing for raising taxes on others, either. Just stating that no matter what the numbers in the brackets say it doesn’t necessarily indicate that people with more money now are more able to live comfortably than those in the same brackets 20 years ago.
The Bush boomlet certainly helped the lowest fifth income bracket, almost doubling its income, if I read this correctly. Some of the very, very poor got poorer but it’s not clear if this is the same people or different people, and if this is largely an illegale issue.
The politics of “naked disparity” is simply the politics of envy. Classical liberals (which is what today’s conservatism essentially is) do not care about these disparities at all, but they care about whether the extreme low end, that got there by no fault of their own, has a tolerable life. And they usually do, in fact they look filthy rich compared to, say, Calcutta’s poor. Not all shared wealth entails forced redistribution by government. Some of it entails the miracle of markets.
That explains why the ultra wealthy socialists like Soros are behind the Occupy Wall Street movement, as its members attack ligitimate business owners and demand more regulations. Basically, they’re doing their dirty work for them and being played like a grand piano.
rob the dead
they don’t feel a thing
save the living
for another day
Exactly, they have a legitimate reason to be upset (virtually all of us, the American public, are being pillaged), but the elitists like Soros are the pillagers. However, because people are uneducated (I blame the commie public teachers), they have no clue who to be upset at. So they turn to the very people who are abusing them, for answered, played like a fiddle, or grand piano (as you put it).
I think it helps to think about things in terms of production and shearing. The production class (middle class mostly) must be able to operate they way then need to. The Earth has plenty of resources for all of us, I guarantee it. The problem is that we producers are like grass or plants in an ecosystem. The small businesses are like the big herbivores that graze. They eat some of the plants, and in turn, fertilize the soil with their waste (like businesses can help people produce mor ethan they could, in turn taking a profit). If you take the producers (people produce, not companies, companies can only facilitate or hurt that process) away, everything else dies. But, at first not everyone is affected. The predators and scavengers have a field day from the animals weak and dying (just like businesses benefit when their competition goes out of business). Eventually with no grass, the predators will eat eat other, until everything dies. Now you know why there are calls for population control. See, the elitists want to be that last predator. Some think they are God, or like God, and all powerful. They aren’t. but we have to realize who the real enemy if, and that’s the ones trying to kill the grass (elitists destroying the middle/production class).
The thing is, to the uneducated they don’t understand how the cycle of life works (how the businesses help maximize the productivity and wealth earning potential of the individual), they just hear “Oh look, you’re being eaten.” The higher/apex predators (George Soros types) don’t eat grass. They don’t work, or produce, they dont even work with the producers, and they seldom even own companies that do. They usually own companies that own companies that produce, or own the companies which finance them, taking some off the top of those who skim off the top. They understand that we need producers, but they get a glut when they destroy things (Like Soros destroying economies of entire countries to acumulate wealth). So their business is in destruction, not creation. They actually benefit when they turn the producers on businesses, because it creats havok from which they can make even more money.
I know the analogy is a bit rudimentary, but I hope that it can help someone else to understand the situation...I hope.
Companies failing and going out of business is just as important in its own way to a healthy economy as companies that do well. Propping up companies that should fail is unhealthy for the economy.
This just proves that you can manipulate numbers to whatever way you agree. What does it matter anyway. We will always have rich folks and we will always have poor folks. Even if everyone had a job and we had 0 unemployment, we would still have poor. No matter how much we all make, there will always be a “last place”.
To be poor in America is to be poor by choice. There isn’t ANYTHING in America today, bad economy notwithstanding, that is an obstacle for gaining even a modicum of a decent life through a good job or working two jobs(as I do). People from all over the world come here because they know here is the better life they dream of. People don’t leave poor countries to come to America to continue to live in poverty. “Poor’’ in America is a crock.
Agreed. Once upon a time there were many entrepreneurs who had tried their hand at a number of things before they found one that sticks. And they often learned from experience each time they failed. Now the costs of opening a business are so prohibitive that a person may risk it all to be just one of the many who fail each year, but because the costs are so high, they may never get a second chance.
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