Unemployment rate hits 5-month high
POSTED BY: FellowTraveler
UPDATED: Wednesday, August 9, 2006 21:39
VIEWED: 7321
PAGE 9 of 11
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Geezer, the reason why I (and others) think you have some hidden agenda is because your arguments are NEVER straightforward. They're self-contradictory at best. For example, on the one hand you say the system "works!". On the other, you think it can't be trusted with money. That's a little like introducing your nephew as a GREAT guy, hardworking, keeps at it... and then sotto voce adding "Don't loan him money". You're fine with paying income taxes (altho you don't think the gummint can be trusted with money) but NOT OK with paying estate taxes. You think that minimum-wagers should get an increase, but don't seem too concerned that SOME are going to get CUT, and can't spare a moment's thought about the cost to social programs and the deficit. You distrust when people editorialize, but then you do it yourself (And *poof*! The deficit is gone!)
So you're either either a supply sider, a "starve the beast" anti-gummint guy, a Republican hack, or you're really, really, really confused. Prolly a Republican hack.Quote:No, it's not that the rich "owe" more. And it's not to keep "the system" from collapsing, it's to keep the ECONOMY from collapsing. But the poor can't keep the economy from collapsing BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE THE MONEY.
Why just the rich? Shouldn't everyone be responsible for keeping the economy from collapsing? The rich already pay a larger percent of their income as income taxes.
No. I stand by my premise that you think the rich owe something extra over their fair share just because they have more money than you, whereas I think they should pay their income tax like everyone else and leave it at that.
Can I give you a little lesson in economics?
The economy works when money flows. Nothing happens if everyone's got their cash tied up in a mattress. But money doesn't diffuse. It behaves in a very strange way: money, like power, concentrates over time.
What happens when the top 0.1% control 90% of the money? Who do they sell to? The abysmally poor? By eliminating most people from consumption, you have just caused the economy to grind to a halt. that's what happened in the many depressions before the Great Depression, and in the Great Depression itself.
Ever since then, people have been aware (except Reagan, Bush, and Bush) that geeting money back into the hands of the majority is the only way to keep the economy going. Business isn't going to do that... it's antithetical to their purpose of maximum profit. So it falls the the government to do what business CAN'T do.
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Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
Go to BLS.gov..........Bureau of Labor stats.......Stop all this nonsense. Numbers speak louder than the words of idiots. Tracked since 1948 looks pretty damn good right now. Where were your posts in 2000? 4.0
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WHAT "looks pretty good right now"? Purchasing power? Income distribution? Employment? Hours worked per week?
Kaneman, yours is one of those inscrutible posts that don't further the discussion.
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Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
What happens when the top 0.1% control 90% of the money?
Gotta call BS on this. The top 1% earn 16% of the Adjusted Gross Income ($1.05 trillion of $6.28 trillion. 2003 figures), and per Soup's figures, control 33% of the wealth. They pay 34% of income taxes.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html
Quote:
Ever since then, people have been aware that geeting (sic) money back into the hands of the majority is the only way to keep the economy going. Business isn't going to do that... it's antithetical to their purpose of maximum profit. So it falls the the government to do what business CAN'T do.
Hence, since the top 1% of income earners are already paying 34% of the income tax (on only 16% of the income(BTW, top 5% pay 54% of total income tax on 31% of income)), let's go ahead and give them the Estate tax break and get more money in the hands of the people with the Minimum Tax increase. Do you really think that rich people paying more tax equals more money to spend in poor peoples' pockets, absent some so far non-existent legislation to give it to them?
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
WHAT "looks pretty good right now"? Purchasing power? Income distribution? Employment? Hours worked per week?
Kaneman, yours is one of those inscrutible posts that don't further the discussion.
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Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
My post was aimed at the subject of the thread "unemployment rate". Ended all "discussion" on topic with a simple look at the facts from BLS web site. If you want a thread about purchasing power start one. I'm sure to end that quick without much "discussion". After reading your top .1% making 90% of the money post. Inscrutable? you must be fu*king joking.
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GEEZER
Yes, when taxes are used right they benefit communities and do exactly those things you say they don't. Programs like head start, social security, pell grants...etc. Taxes can go to helping people live a fulfilled life as Americans.
If you are saying on the other hand,
"if you really think any of that tax money is going to go to the poor, think again, because we will always be fighting you tooth and nail to prevent any benefits from OUR money being used for those dregs,"
then maybe you have a point - but a sick one.
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if you really feel the minimum wage increase is a good thing, then convince me why the party you have no strong words for would intentionally package it with this other bill. We are thankfully on the same page. A mininum wage increase would be good. Why then did the republicans intentionally sink it? Why was a quid-pro-quo neccesary?
To clarify, do you really diverge with the Republican party in the matter of minimum wage increase? Because they have clearly shown that they are not for it. If you feel like that would be the best way to get money into the hands of the people who need it, then why would the republicans keep it out of their hands unless the democrats scratched the back of their lobbyists? It couldn't be that said lobbies have a disproportionate amount of sway, could it? It couldn't be that these politicians aren't actually acting in the interest of the American People, right?
I just wonder why you would try to make rational an argument that says 'dems had their chance to give the poor a minimum wage increase but they didn't do it because of a silly little estate tax cut.'
When you should be asking(as a fellow supporter of a minimum wage hike- wink wink) 'how dare the republicans play politics with a bill that they should be supporting anyway. Why should there even be a need to reach across the aisle by either party on this one? How sick is it that they have leveraged something that the people need, and inso doing, have withheld it from the people?'
A minimum wage increase by itself would have been a done deal,
and both you and I would have been happy, assuming that you weren't pulling our legs about being for such legislation. I for one trust your sincerity. You must be really bugged with your party right now.
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Kaneman, Geezer:
Perhaps you mised the part of the sentence that began "What happens when...". Did I say that this WAS the current situation? No. Do you understand hypothetical sentences??? Apparently not! 
Quote:Yeah, we don't have a flat tax. Did you JUST notice that? It's been that way for decades! And you know what? It was done on purpose.
Hence, since the top 1% of income earners are already paying 34% of the income tax (on only 16% of the income(BTW, top 5% pay 54% of total income tax on 31% of income))
Quote:What are you talking about??? "Let's go ahead and give them" (Who "them"- the very wealthy?) "the estate tax break and get more money in the hands of the people" (are these the same people who got the Estate Tax break?) "with the Minimum Tax (sic) increase" Straighten out that sentence, okay? I THINK I know what you're saying but I'm not going to type a big misdirected answer.
let's go ahead and give them the Estate tax break and get more money in the hands of the people with the Minimum Tax increase.
Quote:First of all, the projected deficit ($310 billion cumulative over 9 years ) threatens programs already in existance. So I don't need to presuppose theoretical legislation I just need to consider the ones already in place.
Do you really think that rich people paying more tax equals more money to spend in poor peoples' pockets, absent some so far non-existent legislation to give it to them?
And since the government that you alternately say works and doesn't work already put all kinds of programs into existance the major ones being Social Security (which you're prolly against), Medicare (ditto), unemployment, welfare, NIH, and minor ones (in terms of funding ) like WIC, Head Start, education etc. So why would you be so entirely pessimistic THIS time except in a backhanded recognition of the fact that the current GOP crop is entirely beholden to the wealthy?
BTW- When I said that money concentrates, the Estate Tax break is an exact example of how that happens. Aside from the normal accumulation of profit through monopolization, there is a political aspect in which the wealthy bend laws to favor accumulation of more wealth. Immediately preceeding the Great Depression, the President and Congress engineered a heretofore unseen tax break for the rich, and income and assets distribution polarized to about the same extent that we see today. History... you should try it some time.
Kaneman: I certainly would appreciate a link. This article en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment shows unemployment as high as 24.9 in 1933 and as low as 1.2% in 1944. I suspect you picked 1948 as a "base" year because it had relatively HIGH post-war unemployment.
But we also need to discuss the measure and definition of "unemployment". If the definition changes over years... for example, if housewives were or were not included as "labor force" pre and post WWII... then we get anomalous changes in the trend. It's a problem with ALL long-term measurements, even something supposedly as quantifiable as "sulfur dioxide in ambient air".
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Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Quote:What are you talking about?
let's go ahead and give them the Estate tax break and get more money in the hands of the people with the Minimum Tax increase.
To clarify.
Lets go ahead and give the heirs of reasonably large estates an Estate Tax break on their inheritances, and get more money in the hands of minimum wage workers with a Minimum Wage increase. The deal proposed in HR 5970 seemed reasonable to me. I would like some clarification on Sect. 402, the Tipped Wage Fairness provision.
Now, please explain where you got the "0.1% control 90% of the wealth" figure. A link to the source would be OK.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Quote:It was hypothetical. I picked the numbers to force people to consider what happens at the end-state of capital concentration. Does that concentration occur? Here is an illustrative quote
...please explain where you got the "0.1% control 90% of the wealth" figure. A link to the source would be OK.
Quote:http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/inequal/2006/0707disparities.htm
Ours is a world of extremes. The poorest 40 per cent of the world population – the 2.5 billion people who live on less than $2 a day – account for five per cent of global income, while the richest 10 per cent account for 54 per cent
A measure of INCOME disparity (which is not the same as wealth disparity) is the Gini Index. You can find an explanation here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
BTW, it is a known (but not common) statistic to look at the top 1% and top 0.1% (top decile) income. The more normally-used divisions (top 10% and top 20%) obscure the most interesting data.
Here is a large set of data showing income distribution in the USA since 1900. If you look at the top 0.01% (for example) you will see that the current distribution is approaching levels not seen since 1928. http://www.nber.org/data-appendix/w8467/w8467-app.pdf
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Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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And here is a whole site dedicated to exploring income inequality. I found this article especially interesting. What I gather from this article is that the overall history of the United States from its agragrian roots was that of relative income EQUALITY up until 1916.
Quote:http://benmuse.typepad.com/ben_muse/income_wealth_distribution/index.h
Last year Kopczuk and Saez published estimates of top wealth shares in the U.S. from 1916 to 2000, making inferences from estate tax data. They found that levels of inequality were highest from 1916 to about 1930, that they fell during the depression and the Second World War, and that they'd remained fairly stable at the lower level since the end of the World War.
The most plausible explanations for the facts are perhaps the development of progressive income and estate taxation which has dramatically impaired the ability of large wealth holders to maintain their fortunes, and the democratization of stock ownership which now spreads stock market gains and losses much more widely than in the past.
(Wojciech Kopczuk and Emmanuel Saez, "Top Wealth Shares in the United States, 1916-2000: Evidence from Estate Tax Returns" NBER Working Paper 10399, March 2004).
Now Rosenbloom and Stutes have pushed back a little further - to 1870 - using data on property ownership from the 1870 Census. They find evidence that overall wealth inequality in 1870 was similar to, and maybe somewhat higher than, the post-World War II distribution. Rosenbloom and Stutes conclude:
Compared to estimates for the early twentieth century, the distribution of wealth at the national level... was relatively equal. In 1870 the top 1 percent of wealth holders owned 27.9 percent of all property, about one-third less than was the case in 1916. Thus, wealth inequality increased substantially during the period of rapid American industrialization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries....For the most part more rural and agricultural states enjoyed a higher level of equality.The exception to this rule was, of course, the South, which remained in 1870 highly rural and agricultural {but also had a } ...legacy of slavery, which ... inequality managed to survive after the Civil War
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Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:Quote:It was hypothetical. I picked the numbers to force people to consider what happens at the end-state of capital concentration.
...please explain where you got the "0.1% control 90% of the wealth" figure. A link to the source would be OK.
So you lied. Okay.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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