[Opinionated Blowhard]

Income inequity is not a “problem” to be “cured” if it results from free market transactions. If it does, its Adam Smith 101 — someone getting rich (ie, having much more income than me) because he or she produced something I want. Way too many people have bought into the idea that unequal income is a problem. In its right form, it makes everyone richer.

[cicero2k]

What bugs me about inequality debate is the lack of distinction between assets and income.

Some of us, make assets a proirity; real estate, equity and bonds. We save and defer to accumulate. Of course, including these items will distort the wealth quintile distribution charts being shown to us lately.

Then there is the corresponding income from assets. This needs to be stripped as well for comparison. Suppose I spend a lifetime of acquiring apartment buildings, living below my means. Then I reap the net rental income. This is a lifestyle choice, not a confering of wealth based on birth. Why is this in the equality comparison?

So the inequality charts should be based on income from employment (not benefits). We already know that the tax inequality pretty much is adjusted to take income from the upper quintile and give it to the lower.

What is the beef then?

Our financial reporters are smart enough to understand this. Over on Business Intelligence, for example they fail to normalize inequality for assets.

I have a feeling that this is the much anticipated punishment of savers movement. See Cyprus last year.

[griswold3]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/maurapennington/2013/03/08/to-fix-income-inequality-the-have-nots-must-become-the-do-somethings/

[Mr. K]

Yes it is simple~!

Take from each according to his means, and give to each according to his needs.

Now where have I heard that before...?

[NormsRevenge]

.. DEmocRats to seek a fairer equaler path this year.. lol .. to address..

U.S. inequality and to suggest that only redistributive taxation will solve or even alleviate it.

...

Didn’t we have a revolution thingy over taxes a long long time ago? .. and that had nothing to do with redistribution, it was all about taxation. It was called survival back then, freeing us from oppressors who knew better what we should have left in our pot at the end of the workday.

considering the leftist elites of today, it almost seems like regime rule by media decree these days, now that is what truly taxes so many of us, even as we breathe in the BS of the Progre$$ives.

[Beagle8U]

“Even McDonalds, the quintessential low-wage, high-volume food-service company, spends only 28% of its total cost budget on labor (including all its expensive top management) so a moderate rise in the minimum wage is unlikely to destroy its business model.”

So what is the other 72% of it's cost spent on? Does this genius think those suppliers won't also be effected by the minimum wage hike?

No market change happens in a vacuum, whatever is changed changes everything.

[GeronL]

Leftists are insane. They are promoting amnesty, which will depress income and all kinds of other things that will turn us into a 3rd world country while talking about “inequality”

[LibLieSlayer]

Communism is wrong... ALWAYS AND FOREVER... and this article is a waste of time and effort.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

WTF is "inequality?"

Are we talking about inequality of possessions? Is everybody supposed to have exactly the same amount of stuff at the same time?

Are we talking about inequality of character and integrity?

Exactly what is the "inequality" that can be "cured?"

[ETL]

.

______________________________________________

Aug 2008...

George Hussein Onyango Obama,
Senator Barack Obama's long lost
brother was tracked down living in
a hut on the outskirts of Nairobi

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/2590614/Barack-Obamas-lost-brother-found-in-Kenya.html

[oblomov]

Raising the minimum wage simply does not reduce inequality. It merely increases the minimum level of labor productivity for which an employee is able to legally contract with an employer. Work harder, biotches!

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

The truth of income inequality is that it changes not by making the rich poorer, but by increasing the wealth of those who create wealth.

That is, beyond a certain degree of wealth, all wealth is tied up in investments. But there is a choice of investments: either to what amounts to rigged gambling games, that create no wealth except for investors; or to investing in things that create wealth, such as R&D and new businesses.

So the idea is not to increase taxes on the rich, but to increase taxes on the gambling games, not on the wealth creating investments. Create incentives in taxation for the wealthy to get wealthier by helping others to get wealthier.

The problem, however, lies with leftists. They so hate the wealthy that they want to *hurt* them, and not just financially, but physically, if they could. This matters more to them than tax revenues for government, or even income inequality.

As long as such irrational people are in charge, there will be no common sense approach to helping people to help themselves.

In many ways, they are like the approach Palestinians take to Israelis. They do not care if the Israelis are kind and generous to a fault, and even provide them with water and power and food. They have blood in their eyes, and want to hurt and kill Israelis, and they don’t care who is hurt in the process.

[jpl]

How does one account for the liberals being in love with people like Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, whose idea of great policy is to conjure up trillions of dollars out of thin air and give it to the richest of the rich?

[yldstrk]

sow what about equality of effort?

will those who sleep til 2 pm force me to sleep til 2 pm or will they drag ass out of bed at 5 am and start their day like I do?

Will those who don’t hit the hay til after midnight force me to stay up late or will they hit the rack at 10 pm like I do?

Will those who don’t hang up they clothes force me to leave mine in filthy piles on the flo or will they hang theirs up like I do?

Will those that don’t pay their bills every Saturday like I do force me to refrain from paying or will they pay theirs like I do?

Will those who don’t have dinner on the table for the kids by 6 pm every night force me to ignore dinner time or will they have dinner on the table by 6 pm like I do?

will those who don’t change their oil every 90 days force me to not change mine every 90 days or will they change their oil every 90 days like I do?

will those who don’t go to church every Sunday force me to miss church or will they go to church like I do?

will those who don’t pay their taxes every year like I do force me to blow it off or will they pay?

and so on and so forth and I think the inequality mantra will stop

[B4Ranch]

[B4Ranch]

[dalereed]

To hell with these communists!!!

Income and wealth should never be equal or even close to it!

[dfwgator]

As long as people have unequal levels of ambition, there will be inequality of income.

[Steve_Seattle]

This debate is usually framed in misleading or even downright wrong terms. "Income equality" is a misstatement of the problem. The problem in this country is NOT that there is a 1% of fabulously wealthy people, or that CEO salaries are too high, or that the minimum-wage is too low; it is that middle-class jobs are disappearing or are being monopolized by two-income families.

It is politically incorrect, but the mass entry of women into the workforce has had the effect of concentrating more middle- and upper-income jobs into the same families. People tend to marry at their own educational level, and now we have well-educated women marrying well-educated men, and often both of them are holding primo jobs. That makes fewer good jobs available for fewer families.

On top of that, we have outsourcing and competition from millions of illegals at the lower end of the job market, therefore depressing wages and increasing unemployment.

[RatRipper]

“Equality” is a utopian commie dream used as propaganda for the stupid that is impossible to ever achieve. But even the terminally stupid know that promises of equality are merely code speak for a politician’s willingness to steal from one group of people to give to them in the form of some benefit . . . of course, after the politician takes his “juice money” out of the transaction. It amounts to corruption wrapped up as compassion and delivered with a wink and a nod.

Personally, I don’t want to emulate anyone, including someone that has more than me. I just want to be me. My likes and dislikes are not “equal” to others. Even with equal subsistance stipends, if only because some are more frugal and are better managers - smarter if you will, some people will live better and more comfortably than others.