Posted on 11/07/2010 8:04:56 AM PST by blam
IT'S OFFICIAL: America Is Now A Banana Republic
Henry Blodget
Nov. 7, 2010, 9:06 AM
One of the hallmarks of banana republics, says the NYT's Nicholas Kristof, is income inequality.
In some countries, the wealthiest 1% of the population takes home 20% or more of the national income.
And now the same is true in America:
The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.
C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
It’s not like I’ve had the same tagline for nearly two years now...
And one of the hallmarks of a liberal is not that he hates poverty, but that he hates wealth.
Import tens of millions of 3rd world illegal and legal immigrants and then ask yourself why you have an income gap? Geez, are these people stupid?
Not the entire US....but the parts that are are growing.
When we continue to allow immigrants who are functionally illiterate come in droves to the country and continue to have babies that don’t finish HS..then the income differences will get greater. If our country continues on the current course we are doomed.
Just look at CA. Huge welfare rolls..huge illegal population(and growing). Chain immigration from undeveloped and uneducated countries. They vote for socialists who promise to keep the benefits rolling and the unions in control. It has become a banana republic and the Rat like it that way.
How Ben Bernanke Sentenced The Poorest 20% Of The Population To A Cold, Hungry Winter
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/how-ben-bernanke-sentenced-poorest-20-population-cold-hungry-winter
“Stein reminds us of Merrill Lynch analyst Henry Blodget in the last overdone market; Merrill hyped tech stocks to investors, while Blodget privately called them “junk” to his friends. In 2003, he was permanently disbarred from the securities industry.”
—strangely enough, there is no comment about what percentage of taxes those “haves” pay vs. the “have nots”-—
but the real story is that the big increase in the gap occurred after the Democrats during the Clinton era made equity compensation of executives acceptable with their demogogic $1,000,000 limit on deductibility of salary. That plus an historic bull market created this travesty. No custodial manager deserves 500 x the salary of the average employee. Boards who allow this should be fired for breach of fiduciary duty.
Except for his own.
We won’t be happy until we run this country into the ground from within. Have a care.
Of course permitting minimum wage (or less) unskilled workers and welfare mama babies from Third World countries really skews the stats, doncha think?
You make a good point, but I ask, "Who's in front of Congress demanding increases in H1B Visas? (hint: Bill Gates loves them.)
My only problem with Altas Shrugged is Ayn Rand's 1950s world view. Her premise of 'hard work = advancement' is about as relevant today as the Railroads she wrote about. In today's 'form-over-substance' society, Consultants are valued over High-Professional Employees because of their connections to other companies.
Mark Cuban once wrote an op-ed on winning the CEO lottery that rings very true: Once you are a CEO, you are invited to sit on boards of other companies, and you will be asked to participate on the Compensation Committee for CEOs who may very well sit on the Compensation Committee of your own company.
I do not see any of this changing until we all 'go Galt'.
“One of the hallmarks of banana republics, says the NYT’s Nicholas Kristof, is income inequality.”
A simplistic and childish class warfare style analysis. The question isn’t income inequality. It’s how does the income inequality occur.
In a free market, massive income inequality can occur when the best and brightest create massive wealth, jobs, innovation, etc. That rising tide lifts all ships.
In a banana republic, massive income inequality occurs when the wealthy collude with a corrupt government to bilk money, power, and resources from the citizenry.
Establishment republicans and democrats hate the former and participate in the latter. That’s why we are starting to look like a banana republic, and an instinctive or studied understanding of that is part of what is motivating the awakening called the TEA Party.
It’s the fault of the moderates and the liberals.
Yes, except his own. Many of them don’t recognize what they have as wealth. More than one well-off liberal has told me that taxes should be raised on the wealthy. When I ask them what they consider wealthy, the standard practice seems to be to imagine the most they could ever earn in their line of work, multiply it by about 1.5 (nice, safe buffer), and that’s where the taxing should start.
I agree. I have always felt that if we believe that we have lost, we have lost. I don’t go along with this story. We, as a country, have not lost. We go through tough times every once in awhile but we will come back. Count on it. Believe it.
When I coached football, there were two words I wouldn’t let the kids use..”I can’t.” If they did, I benched them long enough for them to think about what they said. When you say “I can’t” or “The battle is lost”....you have made up your mind and there’s no going back.
I will never give up on my country or its people.
Well I think a designated 50% personal income tax on billionaires is in order.
“No custodial manager deserves 500 x the salary of the average employee. Boards who allow this should be fired for breach of fiduciary duty.”
Balderdash. Take a look at the history of Ben & Jerry’s for a counter example. (Short version: They limited CEO pay, kept getting cr@ppy CEOs, finally decided to pay market rates for a real CEO, and their business took off to the benefit of everyone involved.) A good CEO is definitely worth 500 x the salary of an “average” employee. Or rather whatever he or she can get paid. A good CEO helps everyone in the company make more.
Your comment reminds me of a discussion with a libdumb acquaintance. I asked, “If you can get a 100% raise, but that meant your boss got a 200% raise, would you take it?” He said, “No, that wouldn’t be fair.” That’s envy driving “thinking,” and it’s classic left wing class warfare garbage.
Now, if a bad CEO is getting paid too much but keeps his or her job for (corporate) political reasons, everyone involved should go to jail.
Good grief! EVERYBODY knows the proper ratio for “C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies” is to “earn an average” of 39.7 times as much as “the average worker”! Why, we used to sit around the corporate comp group in the oil company I worked for and dream up ways to maintain that ratio! If the ratio of “average worker” pay has declined so much with respect to CEO’s, just imagine what has happened to the ratio for journalists! Something EVIL is going on out there!
While Texans beat their chests, Parkland Hospital in Dallas delivers almost 1000 babies per month from illegal aliens.
Is there anyone out there that thought this would end well?
You forgot to finish it:
And one of the hallmarks of a liberal is not that he hates poverty, but that he hates wealth, FOR OTHER PEOPLE.
Let's say that you live in hypothetical "Sunny Key", Florida where there are 100 households and each household has a net worth of $10 million.
Life is good.
One owner sells his house and, much to Sunny Key's surprise, Bill and Melinda Gates move in.
Since Bill Gates is currently worth $54 Billion, by this author's warped reasoning, Sunny Key, Florida is now an extreme example of a Banana Republic since 1% of the households control 98% of the wealth.
A mind-boggling degree of income inequality! Oh, the huge manatee!!
No, really. There is a huge manatee swimming by your canal-front home. You can see it from your swimming pool. It's right there, next to your $500,000, 76 foot yacht. You should phone Melinda next door so she can see it.
The problem with liberals is that they consider wealth as a zero sum game and it is inconceivable to them that wealth can be created without stealing it from your neighbor.
C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001.
“Well I think a designated 50% personal income tax on billionaires is in order.”
There is so much wrong with that short statement it’s amazing.
First, “billionaire” designates wealth, not income. Many billionaires have NO taxable income.
Second, let’s say you meant tax the wealth. Great, you’ve just gutted investment in the private sector (which would decimate job creation) and massively increased the government’s power. Wonderful.
Third, people making high incomes already pay well over 40% in fed and state income taxes in most states.
Fourth, you could tax the top incomes in the US at 100%, and you wouldn’t dent the deficit. But you would utterly wreck what’s left of our economy.
I’ll stop there.
PS Sorry, if you had an implied /sarc tag, I missed it.
And we ought to be thankful that this cover story can't be true, because if it were, that would mean that it's come to this: the President of the United States going hat-in-hand to persuade a 2nd world nation to give us back the jobs we outsourced to it over the last 20 years. And it would mean that we've reached the point where we're supposed to celebrate the "creation" of 50,000 call-center jobs. Oh, my, how the mighty would have fallen, were the story true.
This is hardly a defense of that balance of statistics, if that's what it's intended to be.
The middle class is disappearing rapidly.
Like - - I don't know - - Franklin Raines, for example?
Yeah, I’m watching ABC and listening to the Progressives pushing the Tax the H out of American rant. Your right I left off the giant sarc sign.
It is lovely on a Bright Sunny day listening to Progressives try to answer the question “Is Progressive Agenda DEAD”
Care to comment on this thread? (I respect your knowledge of economics and would like your input.)
I have read a couple of analysis that show that much of the shrinkage of the middle class is because many are moving up into “the wealthy”.
All of these “class based” arguments are based on flawed assumptions. People do not stay in a “class”. The very idea of “classes” is based on marxist non logic.
That sounds bad when libtards drop context. What do the rich do with their income? They invest it, providing more jobs and they spend it on consumption which helps other producers gain income.
Don’t confuse capitalism with fascism or gangsterism. The dramatic increase in compensation of corporate management in recent decades is not the work of the “free market.” It is the result of a breakdown in corporate governance brought about oddly enough by the diffusion of equity ownership into mostly passive hands. This allowed the greedy gangsters to run amok, add in Gresham’s Law and even quality management got sucked into the vortex.
Another factor in the breakdown was simple envy by custodial managers of founders’ wealth. And founders actually earned their wealth. On this I assume we agree.
“While Texans beat their chests, Parkland Hospital in Dallas delivers almost 1000 babies per month from illegal aliens.
Is there anyone out there that thought this would end well?”
Sadly, yes - the corrupt kleptocrats (D and R) thought this would end very well. For them. For us? They could not care less about us (except to keep us down and dependent).
Its always been true everywhere, especially in Monarchist, Communist and Fascist countrys.., and will remain true..
Where is the problem?.. Someone must manage and jobs must come from somewhere..
OZ only exists in the movies.. or mexifornia...
The New York Times ( the snottiest newspaper in the country) NEVER tires of 'class warfare'. Too bad all their people are elitist - well, self hating elitist... waaaaaay creepy.
Oh, really? Clearly your tide has been rising, then. This can be the only explanation for such a quaintly myopic sentiment.
All those people facing foreclosures who wer either in or on the brink of the middle class haven't moved up a notch.
Class is real, like it or not, and it predates Marx. Our president has just begged a hand-out from one of the most restrictively stratified civilization on the planet -- India. If you don't think class mentality governs society, it's because you're insulated from it, and you ought to be thankful of that, insofar as ignorance is bliss.
Perfect example!!!
Maybe I wasn’t clear enough: I think the “ruling elite” (D and R) have moved us to fascism aka gansterism. To the extent income inequality is a result of that (and a lot of it is), it does reflect the devolution of our society towards a banana republic. IOW, I agree w/ you there.
Brilliant, Polybius. Liberal elites must be the only people with wealth ( usually inherited wealth) who believed the way to get more wealth is by stealing... Guess it's because that's how they 'got theirs' - someone else worked for it...
That is eyeopening.
Do not cross the Mighty Obama or your life will be ruined.
Nonsense. Your telling me that a coal miner, steel mill worker, in the early 20th century, was making, proportionally more, compared to Andrew Carnegie, than the workers today(worker to CEO)
Inflation will take care of the gap. At ten percent, $100 becomes $90 just like $100million becomes $90million. That’s a lot of bananas.
Whoah -but no surprise given the rotting corruption we have going on. How can I help?
That's the best pun of the day.
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