The rich get richer

Not since 1928 has the income disparity been so great. On a personal note I have never been a fan of trickle down economics. I know enough wealthy people and I can vouch that there always seems to be a clog in the pipe. If they can pay you less and get more that is all that matters to them. It doesn't matter that they have enough money for the next 10 generations of their family to live high on the hog, they always want more.

Some excerpts From ABC News

The very wealthiest Americans earned more than 19 percent of the country's household income last year — their biggest share since 1928, the year before the stock market crash. And the top 10 percent captured a record 48.2 percent of total earnings last year.

U.S. income inequality has been growing for almost three decades. And it grew again last year, according to an analysis of Internal Revenue Service figures dating to 1913 by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, the Paris School of Economics and Oxford University.


In 2012, the incomes of the top 1 percent rose nearly 20 percent compared with a 1 percent increase for the remaining 99 percent.

The richest Americans were hit hard by the financial crisis. Their incomes fell more than 36 percent in the Great Recession of 2007-09 as stock prices plummeted. Incomes for the bottom 99 percent fell just 11.6 percent, according to the analysis.

But since the recession officially ended in June 2009, the top 1 percent have enjoyed the benefits of rising corporate profits and stock prices: 95 percent of the income gains reported since 2009 have gone to the top 1 percent.

That compares with a 45 percent share for the top 1 percent in the economic expansion of the 1990s and a 65 percent share from the expansion that followed the 2001 recession.


The gap between rich and poor narrowed after World War II as unions negotiated better pay and benefits and as the government enacted a minimum wage and other policies to help the poor and middle class.

The top 1 percent's share of income bottomed out at 7.7 percent in 1973 and has risen steadily since the early 1980s, according to the analysis.

Go here for the full story

Why does this bother you? Are you jealous?

By the criteria put forth, and I will admit by almost all standards, I am rich. I earned my wealth through hard work and smart management of all my assets. You could have done the very same thing and been on an equal financial footing as myself. For some reason that is all your own you chose not to.

The income gap (it is not a "disparity") will always exist. There will always be those who will work as hard as need be and take advantage of every opportunity available all the way down to using coupons at the grocery store (which I still do). And there will always be those who just don't want to work that hard (there is nothing wrong with that) and can't be bothered with getting the best value out of life.

So my question to you is, What is wrong with my ambition to want more?

Allowing fewer and fewer people to capture the weath created by labor and ownership frays the nation's social fabric by undermining American's belief in opportunity. When people start to see how difficult it will be for them to improve their lives, to get that De-Luxe Apartment in the Sky, they become discouraged and stop trying to achieve.



This is not a zero-sum game. We all benefit when opportunity is widely available. The problem we're seeing is that the fruits of opportunity are becoming less and less available, they're being concentrated. And so that's hurting the nation as a whole.



No one can doubt that there will always be rich and poor, since these are relative terms. And no one wants to retard a wealthy person's ambition. What we're seeing, however, is the privileged class actively instituting policies that decrease similar ambition in the masses, who increasingly see fewer pathways up.

And let's be practical here. As income disparity worsens in a democracy, voters will have an increasing incentive to use their numbers to change the system. They can get pretty radical sometimes.

But you've got to admit, the music can be pretty good.

Interesting post tutonow. I have to say tho whenevr I'vee had jbs with some really wealthy folks(been quite a few),they've usually been very cool about cost's,pretty much a "whatevr it takes to do it right" attitude. Dont getme wrong, been a couple who were cheap bastards who I never worked for again.I continued to getcalls and did more work for the others.

Seems to me a huge factor in the disparity between the rich and poor haa been that a huge number of people who used to have good careers and a nice nest egg are now working at wal mart and such. Since '09 and the finacial crisis hit,those who had any assets left have held them closeto the chest.I know many guys who used to be working in an office,had a portfolio buut are now working for way less money anddepleted mosr savings.

Corps are having fantastic earnings but are also very tight in spending any ofit. Doubt about the future? That would be my guess. Nobody really knows how obamcare really works, how it is to be implemented,and what its giing to cost. Ive read some may just pay the fine,it will be cheaper.

Who knows what the true reason,but productivity seems like a reach arguement. I beleive and time will tell a little more that people will have confiden e in the future and things will stabilize. Hopefully.


J

I apologize for tyos,my PCis dead and relegated to mytablet currently.

So the question now is, Why do you believe the fruits of opportunity are less available today?

I find it much easier to start from scratch and amass wealth today than it was in the '70s when I started.
I myself must not be a part of the "privileged class" for I , or no one I know, has ever enacted or caused to enact a policy to decrease ambition in the masses. Quite the contrary, I and most of my peers have done much to encourage and empower those who need and want help.

I am convinced that change will happen. It always does. And perhaps that change will lessen the gap, but I doubt it. Radical change is rarely, if ever, the change that the radicals were trying to achieve.

I'm not sure I really have a point to all this but if I do it is this. The only "disparity" in income levels are in the individuals own heart and mind. One needs to ask themselves "What do I want?" Then set about a plan to achieve it. You will either do so or not. Complaining about the outcome will get you nothing.

No, I am not jealous, just angry. If there is one place I am truly embarrassed about our great nation it is corporate greed. Here is a prime example. The CEO of Wal-Mart makes more in an hour than most of his emloyees earn in a year.

His compensation is right around 20 million a year. Maybe if him and his peers took a little less compensation they could help their workers afford the healthcare Wal-Mart offers.

BTW how do you know I am not on "financial footing" with you? You sound mighty stuck on yourself with that statement. Believe me I have corrected more than one person when they tell me how lucky I am to have my lifestyle and be retired at 55 years old. I have to tell them luck has nothing to do with it, hard work, planning and a budget had everything to do with it.

Nothing is wrong with your ambition to want more as long as you don't screw people along the way to get where you are. My heartburn is people I know personally who can afford to spend $1000.00 on fuel for an evening out in their boat yet they pay the people in their office minimum wage and believe me I know how valuable those woman are to his livelihood.

"Nobody really knows how obamcare really works, how it is to be implemented,and what its giing to cost. Ive read some may just pay the fine,it will be cheaper"---- I find it amazing that such a wide sweeping program will soon be implemented and NO ONE knows what it will cost the American public. Just because the Socialist in charge decrees that Americans will do as he says is not good enough for me and many others. Who made him GOD? Those of you who voted for him and his decrees will rue the day that you were and are so blindly ignorant.

Great point Chilly. I always said when all of the wealth is at the top there is less and less opportunity for the lower 99% to go out and buy the goods that keep this country's economy rolling along. You know the old saying about giving a rich person a million dollars and he puts it in the bank. Give a million poor people one dollar and they spend it.

Right on cue, and completely off subject, doc rolls in to spew his hatred of all things Obama....