Standard and Poors: Record Income Inequality Biggest Dampener on US Growth

That is probably true. The thing is that no nation ever in the history of man ever taxed its way to prosperity. Every time that wealth distribution has been tried it has ended in horrors. Quit blaming those who achieve and achieve yourself. There is never going to be income equality. Let's don't wreck the country for a pipe dream. Those who work will have more if the government takes less. There is the light. I look at what the government takes from my pay and it's a disgrace and it's even more sickening they can't run the country on it. There is a complete disconnect between the tax payers and the government spenders. We can't give any more, it's just not there. Every tax increase has always landed right smack on the back of the working class. Congress is never going to tax the rich because they are the rich.

Are you part of the top 10%?

If not, then why aren't you pulling your own weight? And how are you liking those subsidies?

Statistics always lie. I don't care what the top 10% make. They are not the ones wanting a free ride.

Income inequality isn't about people who work for their money vs. people who don't work for their money. It's about the filthy freaky rich vs. everybody else...including you.

You're right, they're not.

You know who's getting one, at their expense? You.

So let's give socialism another round then. I am currently reading a 3 volume series called the Gulag archipelago. Let's go ahead with absolute government control and seize the funds of and I prison the wealthy and upper class. The problem is that when they go after the rich and run out of money, everyone becomes "rich". History does repeat itself and it's sad the people do not learn from it.
There will always be a top 10% who make more than others. Lets ship the top 10% to a mine in Alaska to work as slaves. It will be an endless supply. I waste my typing on programmed liberals, I fear.

In your warped world, I am certain that is true. People get all fascinated with the tax rates. It's the deductions that allow people to escape taxes, but no politician is for eliminating those.

Yes, there is always going to be a top 10%. That's not the point. It's not even the top 10% anymore. It's the top 1%.

The point is that the top 1% own the largest share of the wealth in the US than ever before. In other words, that's new. It's not even much of an argument that this is bad for the economy. Republicans agree that it's bad. The argument is over what to do about it.

So, you think poor people get more tax deductions than the wealthy or corporations? You know, people who are, at least to your mindset, too damned lazy to get up off the couch and look for a job, somehow manage to get off their ass and get politicians to give them huge tax deductions, while the corporations and wealthy Americans, who can afford to pay people to do nothing all day long but find tax loopholes and lobby politicians for more, don't?

Man, you are not understanding Solzhenitsyn at all, if you think that work is relevant to the American experience.

Doesn't "the market" dictate what a bagger earns?

Instead, let's do nothing and watch all this accumulated capital crumble during a social upheaval, which is what will happen if things continue the way they are.

No, because you see, that bagger at Kroger is part of a union. Which, you know, is an organization designed to fuck over job creators, and is totally unlike "industry associations" like what Kroger belongs to, where the executives of grocery store chains talk about how much they're going to pay for items they buy, how much they're going to spend on wages, lobbying, and the bitchin' new mansion they're going to buy in a place that they'll maybe visit once every five years or so.

This is untrue, because most extreme rises in wealth were accompanied by extreme rises in taxation, and irrelevant, because taxes aren't intended for the prosperity of nations, but of their individuals.

This is completely untrue. It assumes that the United States in the 20th century descended into horrors, while the French Revolution was a kids' fair with rides and candy.

It's absolutely getting closer very day.

Hopefully those unions are on the way out. They drive up prices and hurt everyone. A bag boy should not expect a decent wage. Low wages should be a wake up call to learn something and get a real job. Unions protect the lazy 100% and they have driven a lot of good industries and good paying blue collar jobs out of this country. Their time is long gone.

Do we need bag boys?

Bag girls with really short skirts who work for tips.

And how do you propose they pay for their education, if all they can get are low wage jobs?

That has more to do with our trade agreements than it does if a job is union or not. Chinese workers make less in a month than what many low wage jobs in the US pay in a week. The cost to ship things from China to the US is almost insignificant, so the only way an American worker can compete with a Chinese worker is to take a rather large pay cut.

Of course, even Chinese wages are "too high" because Apple (you know, one of the most profitable companies in the world, with hundreds of billions in cash just laying around in bank accounts) spends $10 billion a year to increase the amount of automation in Chinese factories that build iPhones, iPods, and iPads. Some time in the next couple of decades, we'll reach a point where automation will have put all but a handful of careers out of business. What then? Not everybody's cut out to be a doctor, physicist, astronomer, or other job which requires really complicated thought processes. What will those people do? What happens when AI software reaches the point that even those jobs are redundant?

I have worked in automation with industrial controls for the past 22 years. There is a lot of talk about some serious automation to replace minimum wage jobs if the price goes up. The capability has been there for a long time, but the cost to automate did not give the return on investment with a low minimum wage. That dynamic is changing.

Bring. It. On.

To answer my question, I'll suggest that we need more bag boys than doctors.

I automate so we can compete with the Chinese. We have been taking business away from the Chinese. A robot doesn't cost any more to run here than it does in china and the Chinese are not going to automate with all the labor they have. Robots are more accurate and don't make mistakes, need breaks, or days off.

True, we are going to regain comparative advantage for manufacturing. This will enrich some people, and leave the rest out of jobs. Got any ideas for those folks?

Not quite true, robots do make mistakes, they're only as good as their programming and hardware allow them to be. And they do need breaks and days off, when they break down, which happens quite frequently in factories.

I work with robots quite a bit and they do require some down time and proper maintenance but that is only a tiny fraction of the up time. Breakdowns are pretty much from poor maintenance. Most robot programming is done well and they repeat to the micron. They are so much more accurate than a human that it's not even close. We have some tha move faster than you can see and they have even faster ones yet. Take a tour of the BMW factory in Greer, SC. They have one robot that works the seat into the car as one of the last things. It moves it in all sorts of directions and misses things by millimeters to get it in the exact location for mounting. Robots that used to cost half a million dollars are down or less than 100k in just the last 10 years. We have a large motoman robot that can lift 400 kg and has been working 24/7 since 1998 with only 2 break downs. That job used to be done by 3 people. We are going to replace it with a faster one and automate some more areas as well.

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

Plants will need less people but a few skilled people as well. Instead of one plant employing 600 people, it could be 10 plants employing 60 people.

Focusing on individual cases ignores the fact that there will always be people on the bottom. Even if everyone had the brains of Einstein and put in the commitment of an Olympic champion the fact is there will still be people stuck on the bottom. I'd prefer to live in a society where a significant percentage of people living in poverty isn't treated as desirable.

Even the people on the bottom have better cell phones and drive better cars than I do. That is why they will never have a lot. Part of the problem is not making wise financial decisions.