Posted on 02/03/2014 5:12:40 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Unless you are exceptionally coldblooded, it's hard not to be disturbed by today's huge economic inequality. The gap between the rich and the poor is enormous, wider than most Americans would (almost certainly) wish. But this incontestable reality has made economic inequality a misleading intellectual fad, blamed for many of our problems. Actually, the reverse is true: Economic inequality is usually a consequence of our problems and not a cause.
For starters, the poor are not poor because the rich are rich. The two conditions are generally unrelated. Mostly, the rich got rich by running profitable small businesses (car dealerships, builders), creating big enterprises (Google, Microsoft), being at the top of lucrative occupations (bankers, lawyers, doctors, actors, athletes), managing major companies or inheriting fortunes. By contrast, the very poor often face circumstances that make their lives desperate. In an interview with the New Yorker, President Obama recently put it this way:
"[The] ‘pathologies' that used to be attributed to the African-American community in particular - single-parent households, and drug abuse, and men dropping out of the labor force, and an underground economy - [are now seen] in larger numbers in white working-class communities."
Solutions elude us. Though some low-income workers would benefit from a higher minimum wage, most of the very poor would not. They're not in the labor force; they either can't work - too young, old, disabled or unskilled - or won't. Of the 46 million people below the government's poverty line in 2012, only 6 percent had year-round full-time jobs. Among men 25 to 55 with a high school diploma or less, the share with jobs fell from more than 90 percent in 1970 to less than 75 percent in 2010. For African American men ages 20 to 24, less than half were working.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearmarkets.com ...
Poor people have only the experience of grabbing at a pile of free food in a give-away center on which to draw. the concepts of macro-economics are utterly lost on them.
I must be heartless as I’ve never cared about the ‘gap’ between rich and poor.
I guess that’s because I grew up in America. And in America, we don’t begrudge the fortunes of others. often times, we wish to know their secrets to success which may help us on our own journey
of course, such thinking removes the catalyst necessary for class warriors to drive their ‘social justice’ and ‘income equality’ mantra... which is why they constantly push to ‘fundamentally transform’ the country
The rich are rich and the poor are poor because of the same reason. They both keep doing the things that make them what they are.
*— Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
*— Fully 92 percent of poor households have a microwave; two-thirds have at least one DVD player and 70 percent have a VCR.
*— Nearly 75 percent have a car or truck; 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
*— Four out of five poor adults assert they were never hungry at any time in the prior year due to lack of money for food.
*— Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television.
*— Half have a personal computer; one in seven have two or more computers.
*— More than half of poor families with children have a video game system such as Xbox or PlayStation.
*— Just under half — 43 percent — have Internet access.
*— A third have a widescreen plasma or LCD TV.
*— One in every four has a digital video recorder such as TiVo.
As noted, TV newscasts about poverty in America usually picture the poor as homeless or as a destitute family living in an overcrowded, rundown trailer. The actual facts are far different: #more#
*— At a single point in time, only one in 70 poor persons is homeless.
*— The vast majority of the houses or apartments of the poor are in good repair; only 6 percent are over-crowded.
*— The average poor American has more living space than the average non-poor individual living in Sweden, France, Germany or the United Kingdom.
*— Only 10 percent of the poor live in mobile homes or trailers; half live in detached single-family houses or townhouses, while 40 percent live in apartments.
*— Forty-two percent of all poor households own their home; on average, it’s a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
I have sympathy for people who play by the rules, get training, keep their noses to the grindstone, and still have problems getting a good, steady job. For the ones who expect Uncle Sam to supply them with goodies and/or give them a job they're not qualified for, I have none.
The gap between rich and poor has been widening since the beginning of time. It is a mathematical certainty. On the graph, the poor have a floor, zero. There will always be people who are hovering somewhere around zero, for whatever reason, drugs, alcohol, etc. For the rich the graph has no ceiling, the sky is the limit. For example, if the richest guy makes one million, and I make 15,000 the gap is smaller than if the rich guy makes one billion and I make 150,000 a year. For myself, I would be far happier with the higher gap. I am from the contracting world, and believe me during the 80’s everybody did well. Plumbers, carpenters, roofers were doing very well. So what if guys on Wall Street did even better. For guys in the trades those rich guys are our customers, they do well, we do well. It is just that simple. Today the problem is that who is doing well is restricted to only a few professions, that being government and Wall Street. Wall Street is only doing well because the government class lets them at this time. Under Reagan it was what the individual could do, under Obama it was who the individual knows in government.
So much for the myth of the "working poor."
I’m curious how many of the “poor” have one or more dogs. pets are expensive and a luxury. Also cell phones - of course now with 0bamaphones, the “poor” chat at our expense.
The biggest contributor to poverty today in the US is the breakdown of the family structure and the resulting failure of parents to discipline children, provide them with moral and religious instruction while pushing them to achieve high standards in every endeavor.
The second biggest contributor to poverty today is the popular big media culture which glorifies dependence on government, sex without responsibility, and the urban gangster culture.
The third biggest contributor to poverty today is the education system which promotes left wing ideology and equality of results instead of providing fundamental work and life skills and requiring hard work for success. The left wing educrat mindset has destroyed technical education in the community college system in favor of college prep courses which will do nothing to help many low skill, low motivation poor students to move ahead. As a result middle class wage paying jobs for mechanics, machinists, plumbers, HVAC installers, electricians, and cabinet makers goes unfilled while community college “college prep” degree holders cannot find jobs and cannot afford to finish a four year degree.
The fourth biggest contributor to poverty in the US is the deindustrialization of our economy in the name of “free trade”. The destruction of the manufacturing sector has resulted in the loss of opportunity for low skilled poor people to take a low paying job in a factory and acquire the skills needed on the job to rise to a middle class blue collar career or perhaps into supervisory management. The offshoring of consumer goods manufacturing has resulted in the average consumer saving a dollar or two buying a pair of jeans or a toaster while resulting in the unemployment of millions of workers and loss of meaningful middle class jobs for millions of unemployed poor today. The economic and social cost of caring for a permanent underclass must be significantly greater than any “benefit” realized from the eradication of the manufacturing sector.
The fifth biggest contributor to poverty today is the taxpayer funded non-profit sector which takes taxpayer grant money and uses it to fund politicians and community organizers who perpetuate the government education, economic, and social welfare policies that ensure a permanent helpless underclass.
There will two types of people in the future: Those who’s jobs will be replaced by computers, and the people who program the computers to replace those jobs.
In a truly free market, the poor aren’t poor because the rich are rich. In a crony capitalist market, where we are taxed to bail out Wall Street and “green” energy companies, the all classes are poorer to support the rich.
In a truly free market, the rich are rich because they make goods and services productively and that people want. If there is any doubt about this, just look at the history of personal wealth. Today’s middle class people live better than most of the rich from 50 or 100 years ago. But once government gums up the works enough, that increase in productivity stops and stagnates and we revert to barbarism. Just look at Greece to see what happens when the government-heavy Welfare State collapses.
Didn't get any farther than this....
I must be exceptionally cold-blooded, because I'm not the least bit disturbed by it. In fact, not only do I aspire to amass wealth, but also work towards that goal daily.
The poor are poor because of government.
Poor government schools don’t prepare them to be self-reliant in the labor marketplace.
Government imposed minimum wage prevents them from getting hired by employers who may be interested in taking a chance on unskilled labor if they didn’t have to pay a wage that wasn’t worth their lack of skills.
Never mind the crushing regulatory and tax burden combined with ever deepening cronyism.
Most poor are poor because of poor decisions. Many are rich because of political connections and crime. A few such as Paris Hilton are rich because of someone else’s actions.
Well put. Our fascism is destroying the middle class. Simplistic explanations based on free market presuppositions are meaningless.
Agreed. However, IMO, people who are motivated, friendly, hard-working, and punctual are rarely out of work for long.
Awhile ago, I interviewed people for a low, or entry-level help desk position. My company had a long "Wish List". Some experience, knowledge in X, Y, and Z, college degree, and so on. After interviewing a long list of candidates, we wound up with "Must show up on time, and not curse at the interviewer". The candidate pool was pretty shallow.
I will say that the current poor economy has generally raised the caliber of job applicants that I've seen over the past 3-4 years. People are stepping up their game - out of necessity - I think. Or, the people who are lacking are getting out of the market altogether.
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