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Posted

i've mentioned the incredible concentration of wealth in the US in multiple posts. Now that bastion of economic liberalism, the Wall Street Journal weighs in: The Recession is Over, The Rich Won . Seems we're more like Zimbabwe, Argentina and El Salvador in this super concentration of wealth than countries we normally consider similar. wonder why the CIA cares about this...maybe a recipe for unrest? CEO vs average worker pay 300:1 ....seems fair! socialism is a looming, almost inescapable threat!

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Posted

What a blisteringly stupid article. I'm sure luxury imports from Europe are up only because the evil rich people have gobs of spending cash they collected of the backs of the poor, and has nothing to do with Europe's soverign debt crisis weakening the Euro vis-a-vis the dollar. And the rich could only have gotten richer exploiting the rest of us in 2009...it couldn't possibly have been because the stock market had its best single-year rally in decadces that year.

 

Really, that's a brilliant piece of fluff that's completely long on indignation and short on factual information. :angry:

Posted

I never quite understood why successful people and corporations are often demonized, oh yeah that's right, because most people aren't successful.

Posted
CEO vs average worker pay 300:1 ....seems fair!

 

Oh goodie...more stupid, made up stats to support the 'evil rich' fallacy!

Posted
Oh goodie...more stupid, made up stats to support the 'evil rich' fallacy!

not surprised by the responses. the article doesn't fit your theses. the number you question is given in the piece. many efficiency experts including Deming felt this kind of ratio counterproductive.

Posted
not surprised by the responses. the article doesn't fit your theses. the number you question is given in the piece. many efficiency experts including Deming felt this kind of ratio counterproductive.

What does a CEO making 300 times his average worker's salary have to do with anything? The last time i checked, the salary of 300 average employees was a drop in the bucket for most major corporations. It's a figure that is only out there to stir up populist rage.

Posted

I am surprised by the responses too. Not by tom's, though; he is always a prick. Whether the article is perfect or not, the issue remains. There is more to this issue than plebian jealousy. Much more wealth is controlled by a smaller amount of people than ever before. This affects our economy because they are buying different kinds of goods. It is also a political story, because it means there are more have-nots to vote themselves the largesse of the haves. A greater concentration of wealth at the top means fewer people are more powerful, and increases the incentive to maniplulate markets, politics and form business cartels.

Posted
What does a CEO making 300 times his average worker's salary have to do with anything? The last time i checked, the salary of 300 average employees was a drop in the bucket for most major corporations. It's a figure that is only out there to stir up populist rage.

because the WSJ is so well known for doing just that....

Posted

<excerpt> Talk to any rich person, and they won't tell you they're doing well. They're more likely to complain about their taxes going up, immigrants taking over America, or bleat about that "community organizer" in the White House spending us to rack and ruin on all this socialism.

 

The assumption that rich people are exclusively Republican is pattently absurd. Democrats actually do better among the rich. I don't have time to track down the sources right now, but common sense alone provides for that.

 

 

As far as WSJ being this far right conservative rag, that's a bit of a stretch and certainly in the case of the author. Brett Arends may not be a the next Keith Olbermann but he's certainly not Rush Limbaugh either.

 

Finally, I'm not sure what about his article makes the case that the middle class would be better off with socialism. Unless it makes you feel impotent to know that there are rich people that have far and away more than you can dream of. Sure Russia has less disparity. The difference between 10 and 100 is less than the difference between 1000 and 10,000. I'll let you connect the dots.

Posted
because the WSJ is so well known for doing just that....

It's an opinion article from a lefty... check out his wiki and then look at his previous article titles:

 

Mitt Romney tries to play the jobs card

 

Wall Street robs investors -- again

 

Little guy pays the price for BP disaster

 

How the rich are winning

 

Notice a trend?

Posted
<excerpt> Democrats actually do better among the rich.

no argument there and no need for references. i can understand the rich being dems, especially the self made ones. i can't understand the middle being repubs from an economic perspective, however, other than surmising that they are wannabes who are very confident in their prospects.

Posted
no argument there and no need for references. i can understand the rich being dems, especially the self made ones. i can't understand the middle being repubs from an economic perspective, however, other than surmising that they are wannabes who are very confident in their prospects.

 

As your article points out, when those in government begin their social engineering experiments the middle class are the ones who feel the pain when it doesn't work out. The rich stay rich and are often protected from market forces (see GM). The very poor don't have anything to begin with and often get some extra government perks.

It's usually the middle class families who watch their opportunities evaporate like we're seeing now.

Posted
not surprised by the responses. the article doesn't fit your theses. the number you question is given in the piece. many efficiency experts including Deming felt this kind of ratio counterproductive.

 

It's a bad article. It tries to make a point by taking a very small and incomplete snapshot of data and expanding it into a fictitious alternate reality. It is completely senseless to correlate sales of Tag Heuer watches with wealth accumulation without considering the increased purchasing power of the dollar, or to hold up wealth accumulation in 2009 as some implied example of exploitation by the wealthy without considering the recover from the stock market collapse in 2008.

 

It's simply a retarded article. It doesn't fit my thesis, because I live in reality and that article doesn't.

Posted

A very good way for a company to make its results look better is to present sales numbers as percentage growth, especially following a really crappy year. So the % growth is meaningless unless you know what happened in the period to which you're comparing.

 

You know, like the hockey sticks & stones.

Posted
i've mentioned the incredible concentration of wealth in the US in multiple posts. Now that bastion of economic liberalism, the Wall Street Journal weighs in: The Recession is Over, The Rich Won . Seems we're more like Zimbabwe, Argentina and El Salvador in this super concentration of wealth than countries we normally consider similar. wonder why the CIA cares about this...maybe a recipe for unrest? CEO vs average worker pay 300:1 ....seems fair! socialism is a looming, almost inescapable threat!

 

not news, we have had increasing income inequality since the early 70s

 

Lots of reasons for it- the principal-agent problem, CEO board collusion, rise of the globalist, fall of the unions, trickle down economics, the brain drain from science and engineering into finance, the end of the union vs corporation political model starting with Clinton, and the end finance being an agent for productive growth by lending to business as it was found to be more lucrative to churn investment capital and skim off the top.

Posted
not news, we have had increasing income inequality since the early 70s

 

Lots of reasons for it- the principal-agent problem, CEO board collusion, rise of the globalist... the brain drain from science and engineering into finance..., and the end finance being an agent for productive growth by lending to business as it was found to be more lucrative to churn investment capital and skim off the top.

 

We agree on some things, bob. Honestly though, at this point anyone who uses the term trickle down economics identifies himself as a novice.

Posted
not news, we have had increasing income inequality since the early 70s

 

Lots of reasons for it- the principal-agent problem, CEO board collusion, rise of the globalist, fall of the unions, trickle down economics, the brain drain from science and engineering into finance, the end of the union vs corporation political model starting with Clinton, and the end finance being an agent for productive growth by lending to business as it was found to be more lucrative to churn investment capital and skim off the top.

Meanwhile worker productivity is the highest it's ever been....

Posted
not news, we have had increasing income inequality since the early 70s

 

Lots of reasons for it- the principal-agent problem, CEO board collusion, rise of the globalist, fall of the unions, trickle down economics, the brain drain from science and engineering into finance, the end of the union vs corporation political model starting with Clinton, and the end finance being an agent for productive growth by lending to business as it was found to be more lucrative to churn investment capital and skim off the top.

 

"Trickle down" is not an economic strategy, but rather a description of free market economics.

Posted
"Trickle down" is not an economic strategy, but rather a description of free market economics.

Really? I'm pretty sure the last stimulus was a pretty good example of "trickle down" economics as a strategy. I'm sure the Democratic apologists wouldn't agree but it's not like they can really argue it, either.

Posted
Meanwhile worker productivity is the highest it's ever been....

 

Usually the case when the economy takes a downturn. The less productive (at all income levels) are the first to go and the remaining get a larger workload.

 

What's missing from our economy now IMO are many of the jobs that could be done by the masses without a lot of specialization or education. We're more specialized now. Showing up on time and working hard doesn't go as far as it once did. You have to add value to an organization.

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