Can the economy really be "fixed?"

Nevertheless, people continue to buy sugar. Government can influence the supply channel — whether it's cheaper to produce domestically or overseas, but the net demand for sugar is what governs the industry.

If people can't afford to buy stuff, it doesn't matter how much the government taxes businesses and rich folks. And businesses are sitting on skyscrapers-full of cash to invest in whatever they see fit; the reason they don't is not government policy or fear of taxation but lack of demand.

Further, minimum wage is not a living wage. It's a joke, really.

Again, saying that statistics exist that support your opinion isn't enough. Show me.

Besides, how are you defining 'wealth'? Because even the impoverished in the U.S. are incredibly rich by third world standards. Being poor in the U.S. doesn't suck nearly as much as it does in most anywhere else, and I believe that the reason for that is trickle-down economics.

Sure, people buy sugar still, because they do it in small enough quantity that the price difference doesn't effect them very much. But anyone business that needs a sweetener will not use sugar, they will use corn syrup. That means the actual demand for corn syrup is much higher than sugar, because businesses use infinitely higher quantities than the average person. I've heard that the average American consumes something like three times more corn syrup than sugar.

edited 30th Nov '11 7:17:03 AM by TheEarthSheep

TES, Wages for the bottom of society have stagnated and wealth inequality in the United States started increasing after Regan was elected.

Remember, Minimum Wages vary according to where you are — in Britain, it's £6.08/hour (I'm on it).

That's more than Jobseekers' Allowance, that's for sure — is it a "Living Wage"? I don't know. Depends on exactly where you are, I guess...

edited 30th Nov '11 7:17:59 AM by Greenmantle

Neither of those prove your point. Minimum wage has been increased several times since Reagan, which means it's not stagnant, and your 'wealth difference' doesn't mean poor people are getting poorer, it means rich people are getting richer faster than poor people.

edited 30th Nov '11 7:19:43 AM by TheEarthSheep

Income growths for various wealth groups from 1979-2005 in 2005 dollars.

Every time I hear that stat cited, the trend started in 1973 or so. Also your pic shows that what you say happened, but not that it started in 1979 (or shortly thereafter). All it does is show the aggregate effect of 27 years (of a trend that I suspect started 6 years prior).

Proves absolutely nothing. Like I said, the poor aren't getting poorer, they're just getting richer slower than the wealthy.

Fine, prove the US economy is all peachy.

Earth: what that chart doesn't tell you is the inflation overtime. for most people, inflation has happened faster than income growth, so no, they are losing money, not making more money faster.

Bad =/= wrong. Economies are cyclic. They always have been, they always are, and they always will be.

Those numbers were in 2005 dollars, which means that it actually did take inflation into account.

How can you defend a growing wealth disparity? What's the point of improving society if all of the benefits of those improvements all go to a very very small group of people? Absolutely absurd.

Again, poor people are getting richer. How many times do I have to say this?

Believe it or not, an increasing number of poor people actually have health care. Relatively few people have to worry about whether they'll be able to feed their kids. More and more have college degrees, which is more or less inarguably a good thing.

The problem is that it seems you are only talking about poor Americans as related to rich Americans. But if you were to compare poor Americans to, say, poor Somalians or poor Sudanese, you'd see that the "poor" in America are not only much better off now, but they are getting even better, relative to other poor people in the world.

If you ignore the fact that they're deeper in debt and working longer hours, then yes, the poor are getting sort of richer.

Actually, this newest generation is worse off than the past generation. So, that one's bust. Also, so what? Are you saying that avoiding any and all economic progress is totally justified?

Absurd.

Sheep, the point is, we're comparing America Now to America What Could Be If Not For The 1%Getting Disproportionate Gains. It's a problem of powered interests using those interests in order to gain more power. The fact that the bottom 99% is still slooooooooooowly rising is totally irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, and again, it's not even a fact anymore.

edited 3rd Dec '11 4:49:18 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

[Citation Needed]

How is that even close to what I said? I'm legitimately curious how you think I said anything like that.

Yeah, and America /could/ be ruled by Soviet Russia right now. Sorry, I don't deal in Alternate History.

I'm sorry, you're the one making the positive statement that the poor are getting richer. Maybe YOU should be the one making the citation, hmmm?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but we're you rationalizing that wealth disparity is meaningless/not a problem? If not, my apologies, but that's what I gathered from your argument.

edited 3rd Dec '11 4:54:58 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

"Better" is not "good."

The American poor may still be rich compared to African poor, but this is the United States of America.

The phrase "absolute poverty" shouldn't exist in this country. Period. Furthermore, the very word "poverty" should be automatically abhorrent.

^ Except poverty is a fact of life. You will never eliminate it. There will always be winners and losers in human economies. Somebody will always be smart, somebody will always know how to sell something faster or get away with a higher volume at a higher price, somebody will always be basically Born Lucky.

You can't end it, you can't even change it. Mandate a living wage for minimum wage and that becomes the new poverty as the economy adapts and resets all "change".

Major Tom, I very rarely think people decrying "Perfect Solution Fallacy" are accurate, but in this case, it's on the nose.

Besides: raises in the minimum wage have typically not caused mass unemployment as you're insinuating, nor mass inflation.

edited 3rd Dec '11 5:05:46 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

I humbly apologize, going by health care, according to this table, health care coverage has remained statistically constant since 1970. I can't find any convenient data to confirm or deny the other bits.

However! While the number insured hasn't increased, it also hasn't decreased, which means that the poor aren't getting any poorer, at least by this-admittedly inconclusive-data.

And I do not consider the wealth disparity to be a significant problem. Yes, it's certainly not ideal, but it's also not anywhere near as bad as a lot of people might have you believe.

edited 3rd Dec '11 5:06:35 PM by TheEarthSheep

Sure it is. Until the '70s, middle and lower income were rising quite steadily. Then we let the economic libertarians do their supply-side garbage, lower and middle wages stagnated, and upper level wages went to the goddamned moon.

Fuck that noise, and fuck the Perfect Solution Fallacy. Sure, there will always be poverty in a scarcity-afflicted world. I agree that this true.

I sure as hell won't take it sitting down, however.

The number of elderly not in poverty has basically remained stable during the recession, and was going down before hand. So, if less elderly are impoverished due to Social Security and medicare, it stands to reason that that must mean that-in order to have that not correlate to a reduction in poverty overall-there must be more poverty amongst the non-elderly.

If you're saying wealth disparity isn't a significant problem because "people aren't any worse off now than they were 40 years ago" then how is that NOT equivalent to saying "It's mostly OK that people are exactly where they were 40 years ago-there's no need for progress" exactly?

edited 3rd Dec '11 5:10:03 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

But poverty is subjective. What we call "poverty" here is outlandish wealth in other places. That was the point I was trying to make: While poor Somalians have had basically the same lot since the rise of Imperialism a hundred years ago, and were arguably worse off before then, the American citizen has had tremendous economic growth in that same period of time. The poor have moved from working in factories with terrible conditions to working in offices with cell phones and computers. While the American citizen has always been better off than a Somalian, the extent to which he is better off is increasing, meaning he is accumulating wealth.

Like I said, "better" is not "good."

I don't give a fuck what the poor in other countries are like—other than perhaps wanting to help them, too. I care that the wealth disparity in the United States is atrocious. If we have 50 million in poverty—a sixth of the country—and yet the top 1% can pay off the national debt about six times over, something is wrong and needs to be fixed, period.