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Obama’s fact-challenged inequality speech
AEIdeas ^ | July 26, 2013, 10:50 am | James Pethokoukis

Posted on 07/26/2013 12:05:26 PM PDT by LucianOfSamasota

During his economic speech at Knox College, President Obama stated, “The link between higher productivity and people’s wages and salaries was severed – the income of the top 1 percent nearly quadrupled from 1979 to 2007, while the typical family’s barely budged.”

In other words, America’s three-decade, pro-market shift helped only the rich. Sorry, middle-class families.

But this is certainly wrong.

1. As I have written, the typical family’s income didn’t “barely budge.” This is a point the Washington Post’s Dylan Matthews also explains:

The CBO finds that, before taking taxes and transfers (like Social Security or the Earned Income Tax Credit) into account, real median household incomes grew 19.9 percent between 1979 and 2007; after taking transfers but not taxes into account, they grew 30 percent; and after taxes, they grew 38.2 percent … real median household incomes in America are growing, and it’s inaccurate of Obama to suggest otherwise.

In addition, economist Richard Burkhauser finds that median income rose 21% from 1979 through 2007 — pre-tax, pre-transfer — and 37% — post-tax, post-transfer, and including health benefits. Then there’s research from the University of Chicago’s Bruce Meyer and Notre Dame’s James Sullivan, who find that “after-tax money income plus non-cash benefits for the median family grew by 54.6% between 1979 and 2007, growing from $31,880 to $49,298.”

(Excerpt) Read more at aei-ideas.org ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: obamanomics
Examination of some of the tyrant's economic talking points.
1 posted on 07/26/2013 12:05:26 PM PDT by LucianOfSamasota
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To: LucianOfSamasota

He’s telling the next generation of anti-capitalist leftists what they need to hear. Which is, that capitalism has been destroying society since its was forced on us 3,000 years ago. So, we destroy capitalism first and then worry about how to make socialism work.


2 posted on 07/26/2013 12:16:00 PM PDT by Telepathic Intruder (The only thing the Left has learned from the failures of socialism is not to call it that)
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To: LucianOfSamasota
Obama uses the term "middle-class" in ways that show that he either does not understand--nor does not bother to want to accurately deal with--the realities of the subject. He is a demagogue, who has repeatedly--throughout his career in politics--employed the typical Leftist demagogue's reliance on continually reiterated slogans playing to the basest motives of those most susceptible to mass manipulation.

That the media, and pseudo-intellectual Leftists in academia, serve as a veritable chorus repeating those slogans as serious thoughts, demonstrates the underlying compulsion, which has enabled the demagogues of the Left from Robespierre through Obama, to wreak havoc on decent people.

See Compassion Or Compulsion?

No one but demagogues & scoundrels actually benefit from Egalitarian compulsion. The reason is obvious. The very idea of dependence on Government to solve any individual or groups' economic problems, diverts attention from the personal responsibility that is the essential prerequisite for true human success. The need to find scape-goats to blame for failure only compounds the diversion, making it virtually insurmountable.

William Flax

3 posted on 07/26/2013 12:20:39 PM PDT by Ohioan
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To: Ohioan
Robespierre through Obama

I would probably go back to Rousseau, but otherwise I agree.

4 posted on 07/26/2013 12:25:16 PM PDT by LucianOfSamasota (Tanstaafl - its not just for breakfast anymore...)
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To: LucianOfSamasota

I think that Rousseau was more into entertaining the ladies of leisure in salons, than stirring the rabble to cheer lopping off the heads of young women, whose crime was having been born to wealth.


5 posted on 07/26/2013 12:31:44 PM PDT by Ohioan
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To: LucianOfSamasota
Piketty and Saez... It seems like every BS economic analysis that comes from the left has one or both of these guys behind it. I wish the right would make an effort to call these two out as liars and make their names synonymous with “Bull$h!t”
6 posted on 07/26/2013 12:32:23 PM PDT by r-q-tek86 ("It doesn't matter how smart you are if you don't stop and think" - Dr. Sowell)
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To: Ohioan

I was thinking of his ‘social contract’ theories, but you’re right - he never became a demagogue.


7 posted on 07/26/2013 12:36:47 PM PDT by LucianOfSamasota (Tanstaafl - its not just for breakfast anymore...)
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To: LucianOfSamasota

Simple rule, if that POS’s lips are moving, he is lying.


8 posted on 07/26/2013 12:42:14 PM PDT by Mouton (108th MI Group.....68-71)
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To: LucianOfSamasota

Commie Obama’s talking points are smokescreen distractions for the products of Obama’s first 4 years in office:

* No known un-forged records of Citizenship, or Scholarship
* Benghazi Massacre
* Cover up of Benghazi Massacre
* IRS-Obama’care” Commune Death Grip on Wealth and Health
* NSA-Gestapo Death Grip
* Trillion Dollar a year Federal Overspending
* Monthly violations of the US Constitution by Obama


9 posted on 07/26/2013 12:56:34 PM PDT by Graewoulf (Traitor John Roberts' Commune-Style Obama'care' violates U.S. Constitution AND Anti-Trust Law.)
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To: Graewoulf

You forgot to mention the killing of Seal Team Six.


10 posted on 07/26/2013 12:57:30 PM PDT by Eva (B Obama is to Trayvon Martin as Al Sharpton is to Tawana Brawley)
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To: Eva

Yes, and at least a dozen more products of Obama’s sorry incompetence and Communist malice toward the USA.

As stated by Obama in the last month of the 2012 National Election, the main reason voters should vote for Obama was for “REVENGE!” [ Emphasis was his. ] Hence, we are not surprised by Obama’s Communist-based malice towards us.

The gullible Liberal Agenda Media, RINOs and Democrats will discuss Obama’s Smokescreens, ignore the scandals, and thus promote the Communist goals of Obama, Holder, Axelrod and Jarrett.

Remember 50+ years ago when a DEMOCRAT said: ‘”ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU? ASK RATHER, WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY?!”

Who today, save the heroic in the US Military, can honestly identify with the above credo, long ago discarded by “both” political parties?


11 posted on 07/26/2013 1:14:14 PM PDT by Graewoulf (Traitor John Roberts' Commune-Style Obama'care' violates U.S. Constitution AND Anti-Trust Law.)
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To: LucianOfSamasota

OMarxist gets away with lies every speech.


12 posted on 07/26/2013 1:20:57 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer (The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.)
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