Citigroup: The rich will continue to get richer at the expense of everyone else

[Plow]

lol, yes they are man, more or less. That's why Kuya's been calling your posts irrelevant for like 3 pages now. I mean, Beckwin maybe because he's got that proletariat vindication vibe going, but yeah you're kinda projecting alot.

See:

http://www.bluegartr.com/forum/showp...&postcount=109

This one in particular, especially the bolded and the last paragraph:

You seem intent on framing the issue as if we were talking about some nefarious group of people looking to use their bags of money to play nasty pranks on everyone else. Let's focus on concrete examples to see if you understand.

In the health care debate one side wanted a comprehensive reform that included a government run system where care could be provided to as many people as possible, and one side that was against this was the health care industry and, as it is often called, big pharma. Now, there are plenty of reasons why the public option or single payer or many of these sorts of programs lost, lobbying not being the only one, but the influence of these monied groups was felt. Particularly because in this debate the Democrats were far more interested in preventing money from heading towards the Republicans during elections than they were with actual reform. Concrete examples were the trading away of importation of generic drugs from Canada, and the trading away of the public option in exchange of cooperation from the health care industry. It was really no contest.

You see the same kind of influence exerted by contractor companies involved in the military industrial complex, although part of their strenght lies in what is called the "revolving door", their vast coffers nonetheless help them secure favourable offers from government, even if they have a history of providing poor service, or a history of abuses in the battlefield(such as rape or murder).

Financial regulation is also a fine example of the vast amount of power that money exerts over government. Much of what led to the crisis in 2008 was exactly because of the deregulation campaign they lobbied for in previous years, and their ability to neutralize what little was left of regulation with their influence. Even now financial reform is looking quite uncertain considering what it's up against.

All these examples are not just due to the wealth gap obviously, but the relationship to my argument is that the wealth gap only enhances these grirevous situations. It is true that the top 10% or top 1% have different ideologies and different interests, but not all interests are represented in these brackets. The more polarized the wealth distribution becomes, the more likely it becomes that some interests end up prevailing over others because they count on a much larger pool of capital. The point is to maintain an agonistic environment by keeping the wealth distribution as well spread as one can possibly make it so some interests (such as interests in public run health care, or a winding down of the war establishment or regulation of financial institutions) have a better chance of fighting against interests that tend to congregate at the higher income brackets. Where do you think, for example, the intests of labor tend to congregate? In the higher income brackets or in the lower income brackets? As income becomes more polarized, do you think that the interests of labor weaken? For someone whose interests are labor, that is a problem.

Implies that the rich directly determined policy, while completely disregarding that half the country disagreed with the policy he would have preferred.

There are multitudes of reasons for the increase in wealth disparity.

Think of this like an rpg:

The fact of the matter is that as society advances, new skills and abilities become available. Further skills and abilities depend on prior, and then bring about even more new skills and abilities.

The people in society literally become more effective through their own design. Here we go, falling back on my mom yet again for an example.

She started working at Hospice in 1991. 2 years before the p5 (original Pentium) existed.

When a caregiver went to a house, they took literal paperwork in cases with them. If they didn't have specific information, they had to call in (virtually nobody had cell phones then btw), and people had to go physically look at the files. Any changes would have to be noted, brought back and reported, and the physical files both in office and mobile had to be altered.

Now, they have laptops. They have dedicated software made specifically for this line of treatment, not generic business or medical software adapted for their use. If a caregiver needs information, it's right there (from no cell phones to wireless broadband for most areas). If they need to make an immediate decision on a potential change in medication, all the relevant allergies, other medications, etc. are right there with them. They have better tools, better education to be able to operate with those tools, they manage more work, and they do the job better.

This has occurred through advances in technology, communication, and other general efficiency improvements. In this particular industry, it's also been impacted massively by people's simple will to improve care. (If you'd like I can link you some really interesting writing on the subject, just pm me.)


Anyway, here's what it adds up to: the people at the top simply do more, better work than before. The people in the middle do as well, both through better understanding of how to work (education), and the means (technology, transportation, communication).

However, there remains a huge portion of unskilled labor. The rise in their education level is minimal (barring unemployment/recession issues at which point the "average" unskilled laborer becomes much more skilled). Their work is made more efficient by the same advances; their credentials less so.

Now, I'm not going on a rant about poor people here, here's what I'm getting at:

A truck driver right now who has the education/skills/experience to handle dangerous loads is going to reach into that upper 50, and potentially even 80th percentiles.

A truck driver who has the skills to drive a ford ranger for auto zone, not so much.

Where, then, do we see that the guy delivering parts *should* be richer than a guy delivering parts 40 years ago?

The guy delivering hazmats 40 years ago was a guy with a big enough truck to hold some really thick containers. The guy doing it now has extensive special training and understands loads of equipment that didn't exist 40 years ago.

The guy delivering parts... probably got an automatic instead of a stick.

I'm not saying we don't have the responsibility to make sure everyone is ok. We do, and we're far, far, far from achieving something even resembling that goal. The problem is we're looking at the biggest growth in capabilities, education, and even raw number of "fields" to enter in the history of man. That doesn't tell us that the people with the same responsibilities but more resources to accomplish them with as compared to decades ago should be richer by comparison. It tells us that they probably have more comfortable lives through advances in general (yearp), there are probably lots more highly educated people (yearp), who are producing more goods and services (yearp), which will probably go largely to those who do more to grab what's out there (yearp).


Sigh, you've got me rambling now but I want to make a couple more points.

A much bigger issue here than the political influence factor is the simple effect on cost of living by the advancements.

There are more people consuming more, which in a naturally limited society results in price increases beyond natural inflation. This then results in unskilled labor having to work *more* to keep up. Solving that would logically require some direct redistribution via take/give.

So why not discuss based on issues like that? I've provided extensive examples as to how the rich can be, and are in large part, extremely productive and beneficial to society.

If you want to actually accomplish something in relation to the "bad side" of the wealthy groups, you need to approach them directly, and their illegitimate practices.


Attacking the entire group of "the wealthy" while posting on a free forum supported in large part by a rich guy that does it just because he's awesome, on your computer whose parts are designed and built by some of the richest people in the world, via an operating system designed and developed by literally the richest guy in the world, which there's a good chance you conveniently bought through a major business operated by some of the richest people in the world, that you probably drove to buy in a car made by some of the richest people in the world, and may have paid for with credit provided to you by some of the richest people in the world...

It's like complaining about how the government needs to cut taxes and spending to fix the economy because you're unemployed from your job that mainly sells things to the government, which you drive to on public roads, etc.

[Beckwin]

over 50% of voters voted for obama, who campaigned on a single-payer government option. only when lobbyists and astroturf movements got involved did we start seeing any public shift on healthcare, and we all read the reports of the back-room deals going on between congress and big pharma/big insurance, etc. No one is saying that other groups hold no influence in politics; the entire point being discusses here is that the concentration of wealth allows very small groups to hold disproportionately huge influence.

all your little anecdotes about some rich people doing good do NOTHING to address to the big problems that other concentrations of wealth create. And despite my baiting posts, I (nor Kuya) have said nothing to the effect of "no one should be rich"- it's more that people are more rich than they deserve to be, and that high, high concentration of wealth creates significant barriers to others achieving wealth, not to mention average joes seeing their little piece of the pie grow at all (Cadsuane and Archi have posted a good chunk of evidence for this).

But again, you're just doing a lot of projecting, sounding like a GOP stump speech with your cute little anecdotes about small business owners and the virtues of the rich because you're feeling attacked here due to your family's wealth. Get the fuck over it, Richie Rich.

[Plow]

over 50% of voters voted for obama, who campaigned on a single-payer government option

Over 50% of voters voted for Bush the 2nd time, that means that once they for a fact knew he was going to redistribute back to the wealthy, start 2 wars, and extensively violate human and social rights... that I can use that as an argument to disprove the claim that half the people in the country didn't support it.

Right?

only when lobbyists and astroturf movements got involved did we start seeing any public shift on healthcare, and we all read the reports of the back-room deals going on between congress and big pharma/big insurance, etc.

I read lots of reports of Obama being a terrorist muslim America-hating communist totalitarian dictator. Stating that establishes a credible argument, right?

No one is saying that other groups hold no influence in politics; the entire point being discusses here is that the concentration of wealth allows very small groups to hold disproportionately huge influence.

No one is saying that the people who provide you with the opportunity to have this discussion, give more to charity than the entire rest of the country combined, develop countless conveniences you take completely for granted, are extraordinarily good at what they do, and provide massive quantities of jobs/careers *don't* develop a lot of power.

The problem is the argument of if it's possible to earn power, and why you're not trying to earn it, but to get someone to forcefully take it and hand it to you.

all your little anecdotes about some rich people doing good do NOTHING to address to the big problems that other concentrations of wealth create.

Oh, I see, everything *good* the rich accomplish is meaningless, everything *bad* any of them do means they all need to be punished.

Thank you, neo, for your brilliant insight.

And despite my baiting posts, I (nor Kuya) have said nothing to the effect of "no one should be rich"- it's more that people are more rich than they deserve to be,

Oh, really, and how rich do they deserve to be?

How do you determine what they deserve fairly?

Who are you, as someone utterly and completely clueless about the economy, about what big businesses do, and even about who the fuck is causing the problems you're harping on about (I mean seriously, I bring up John Paulson and you accuse me of intentionally disregarding the "problem people?" Really?), to decide?

Here, let me take 5 seconds on wiki to show you just how fucking clueless you are about what has happened:

On April 16, 2010, Paulson & Co. was mentioned by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in court fillings when the SEC sued Goldman Sachs and one of Goldman's CDO traders. The SEC alleged that Goldman Sachs materially misstated and omitted facts in disclosure documents for a synthetic credit default obligations (CDO) product it originated. The allegation was that Goldman Sachs misrepresented to investors that an objective third party (ACA Management) had assembled the mortgage package underlying the CDOs when, in fact, Paulson & Co., with economic interests directly adverse to investors, had a major role in assembling the mortgage package.

As a counterparty in the CDO transaction, Paulson & Co. stood to reap great financial benefit in the event of default. (It's alleged that Paulson selected a portfolio of CDOs that were likely to default, against which Paulson & Co. had already sold short or would sell short.)

And the best part:

Paulson is #45 on the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest billionaires[25] and is worth approximately $12 billion as of 2010. On April 16, 2010, the New York Times reported Paulson had earned $1 billion in 2007, $2 billion in 2008, and $2.3 billion in 2009 from fees received from his hedge fund by betting against subprime mortgages long before the term became well known.

Hi, this guy doubled his (already massive) wealth during the recession by fucking betting for it to happen and then causing it intentionally.

and that high, high concentration of wealth creates significant barriers to others achieving wealth, not to mention average joes seeing their little piece of the pie grow at all (Cadsuane and Archi have posted a good chunk of evidence for this).

What barriers? What has joe done to grow his wealth?

But again, you're just doing a lot of projecting, sounding like a GOP stump speech with your cute little anecdotes about small business owners and the virtues of the rich because you're feeling attacked here due to your family's wealth. Get the fuck over it, Richie Rich.

If I was insulted about my family, I'd be lining up what we've actually done for you.

I don't care about your fucking retarded attempts to insult me be calling me rich.

You know who the last person to try to insult me by (literally) saying "You... rich people"?

A welfare queen with 5 kids by 4 dads all earning her child support while not living with her while she sat around collecting welfare and doing nothing but watching tv, smoking 2 packs a day, and taking her pills paid for by your taxes.

And guess what? I still defend welfare adamantly, as you can see in that other thread.


Why? Because I'm not some oblivious retarded fuck that honestly believes wealth or power is an indicator of rather people are good or bad. It's what individuals do specifically that matters.


Now, for some reason, and I really don't know why I'm bothering, boredom I guess, I'm going to actually re-reply reasonably. You should try it sometime.

[Beckwin]

you mentioned one blatantly bad guy as if he were the exception to the rule and not really a big deal- I MEAN LOOK AT BILL GATES AND WARREN BUFFET AND ALL THESE MOM AND POP MOTHERFUCKING ANECDOTES WHY DO YOU HATE SUCCESS BECKWIN?!?!?

and the back-room deals did happen (there's documented evidence of it); comparing that to "reports" of Obama being a socialist fascist muslim kenyan dictator is beyond dishonest, you stupid fuck.

[Beckwin]

No one is saying that the people who provide you with the opportunity to have this discussion, give more to charity than the entire rest of the country combined, develop countless conveniences you take completely for granted, are extraordinarily good at what they do, and provide massive quantities of jobs/careers *don't* develop a lot of power.

The problem is the argument of if it's possible to earn power, and why you're not trying to earn it, but to get someone to forcefully take it and hand it to you.

other countries with less wealth inequality, better qualities of living, and more effective democracies do what you talk about in the first paragraph. but you, of course, seem to want to give all credit to capitalist superheroes with disproportionate wealth, as if we should be giving thanks to them everyday. laughable.

as for the second paragraph, that's already been covered with figures from cadsuane (iirc) demonstrating that moving up is incredibly unlikely. horation alger anecdotes are based on luck more than anything, you dense fuck.

[Plow]

over 50% of voters voted for obama, who campaigned on a single-payer government option. only when lobbyists and astroturf movements got involved did we start seeing any public shift on healthcare, and we all read the reports of the back-room deals going on between congress and big pharma/big insurance, etc. No one is saying that other groups hold no influence in politics; the entire point being discusses here is that the concentration of wealth allows very small groups to hold disproportionately huge influence.

Ok, first off: number of voters does not equate 1 to 1 with number of people that support each and every aspect of every policy he holds. Plenty of people voted for Obama that didn't support the public option, plenty (albeit likely far less) of people voted against him despite being fine with it.

Exactly half or not, there are a ton of people opposed to it. If you didn't see that 20 years ago (I was 8 and I understood it then), I'm really not sure what to tell you. Its been present long before you even knew who Obama was.

Further: You should have seen this coming. Obama did.

Read this:

http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issue...reFullPlan.pdf

The whole thing. You'll be absolutely disgusted with yourself if you honestly believed all along that he was a strong proponent of the public option.

You'll probably get to about here:

Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that protecting and promoting health and wellness in this nation is a
shared responsibility among individuals and families, school systems, employers, the medical and public health
workforce, and federal and state and local governments. All parties must do their part, as well as collaborate
with one another, to create the conditions and opportunities that will allow and encourage Americans to adopt
healthy lifestyles.

And be like "ok, here it comes..."

Then at some point you'll realize between then and the end of the paper he never says another word about the public option.

Throughout the paper, there's a very clear pattern of the public option being "tossed in there" where it can be easily dropped off the table. It's only directly stated as a possibility once, and in passing. The rest of its mentions are "or the public option" and things like that.

The reality is, the plan is barely different from what he campaigned on with the exception of no public option and no importation of drugs. I'm not the only person pointing this out, btw:

But whether you love the Senate bill or loathe it, whether you're impressed by Obama's effort or disappointed, it is very hard to argue that the bill Congress looks likely to pass is fundamentally different from the approach Obama initially advocated. "The Obama-Biden plan both builds on and improves our current insurance system," the campaign promised, and on that, for better or for worse, they've delivered. You can debate whether Obama should have lashed himself to such an incremental and status-quo oriented approach, but you cannot argue that he kept it a secret.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezr...amas_camp.html

all your little anecdotes about some rich people doing good do NOTHING to address to the big problems that other concentrations of wealth create.

And nothing you've stated does anything to address the fantastic benefits a huge portion of the very wealthy offer to everyone else. Can you imagine right now if Wal-Mart and Sam's just plain did not ever exist?

Do you think there would actually be a million American jobs with reasonable pay and good benefits for the entirely unskilled workforce elsewhere in its place?

Do you believe people would bother with creating a company that provides 1.6 million American jobs and offer more than competitive benefits to their employees if you set some arbitrary cap on income or tax them to the point that getting richer doesn't actually make them any wealthier?

And despite my baiting posts, I (nor Kuya) have said nothing to the effect of "no one should be rich"- it's more that people are more rich than they deserve to be, ... , not to mention average joes seeing their little piece of the pie grow at all (Cadsuane and Archi have posted a good chunk of evidence for this).

How rich does a person deserve to be?

If you provide the equivalent of 5 average sized cities worth of jobs, with good benefits, to people that for the vast majority have absolutely no other competitive options, can you really be richer than you deserve?

If you provide a couple hundred thousand extremely well paying jobs that flat out did not exist 30 years ago, and develop something every bit as important as our highway system, and the framework for and entire industry of millions of people worldwide, while working 80 hours a week for your entire adult life, eventually switching that entirely over to philanthropy, how rich do you deserve to be?

If you manage people's insurance and investments in a fair, legitimate way and in the process make tons of other people rich as hell, save countless failing businesses, and help countless people ensure their lifelong wellness, and happen to be the best person in history at your job, how rich do you deserve to be?

If someone asks you to take the helm as they start a company to provide software for end-of-life care organizations because the industry is simply not offering effective solutions for the problem, and you're basically considered the best there is at managing it, so you take over an 8 person company doing virtually nothing but losing money, and with in 10 years it's 52 people turning 8 million in revenue and providing the software used for 1 in 4 Hospice patients nationwide, while personally traveling all over performing sales and support, teaching classes on how to use the software, etc., how rich do you deserve to be?

I'm sorry, it's simply not your, or anyone else's right to decide.

When employees are not being rewarded fairly *for what they do*, then it's a problem.

The issue you're failing to address is that there is a very big question around why the wealth should go to whom.

Say you work at a factory, and you pull a lever that stamps a sheet of metal, while making sure it lines up straight and doesn't get jammed. Let's say the executives manage a great new deal to sell those stamps to... wherever, radio shack wants them for their new toy cars, and is willing to pay a premium.

Suddenly, there is an influx of new revenue. Your job as the stamp guy is exactly the same. You had nothing to do with the business interactions that brought in all the new money.

What exactly did you do that implies you earned a share of that new wealth?

If you're working more, you should get paid more, obviously. If there's a problem in that regard, then yes, there should be legal action. But if you're working the exact same hours and doing the exact same thing the exact same amount of times, the executives are not "obligated" to share the benefits of their action.

Should they probably give you at least a bit of a raise in light of the company's good fortune, as decent people? Of course. Is it anyone's right to say they must? Absolutely not.

and that high, high concentration of wealth creates significant barriers to others achieving wealth

Support this statement and I'll discuss it with you. It's bullshit. Competition != preventing people from getting rich. Anything you come up with to argue this is going to be things people do that breaks already established law. If you want stricter regulation and harsher punishment, I'm right with you.

If you want to proclaim that people being very rich is detrimental to other people potentially getting rich, you've got entire industries to explain.

But again, you're just doing a lot of projecting, sounding like a GOP stump speech with your cute little anecdotes about small business owners and the virtues of the rich

I've provided you extensive factual evidence of who the majority of the super-rich are, and shown you how they've proved massively beneficial to society.

You've thrown out names of popular targets whose actions you don't know, and the implications of which you don't understand, and said "but look they're bad! Good things don't matter, only bad!"

because you're feeling attacked here due to your family's wealth. Get the fuck over it, Richie Rich.

Whatever it takes to convince yourself that people aren't arguing against you because there's a possibility you might be wrong.

Reality: You're against globalization when it represents Clinton because he's not a communist. You're for globalization when it represents Obama because you still think he might be enough of a communist.

You're all about anecdotal evidence when it shows rich having a negative impact, regardless of the fact that nobody's arguing that the specific people you mention are not a problem, because what they're doing is unreasonable, unfair, and often outright illegal already. Anecdotes are "cute" but utterly meaningless when they show you that what you're proposing would restrict extremely beneficial elements of society.

You'll all about the outrage on people for legislating morality when it comes to things like who can get married and who can have abortions and when. But when it comes to legislating morality in terms of "this guy got rich, so everyone below him should be richer regardless of if they're doing anything different," then it's perfectly fine.

[Plow]

you mentioned one blatantly bad guy as if he were the exception to the rule and not really a big deal- I MEAN LOOK AT BILL GATES AND WARREN BUFFET AND ALL THESE MOM AND POP MOTHERFUCKING ANECDOTES WHY DO YOU HATE SUCCESS BECKWIN?!?!?

No, you incredibly brilliant and outstanding citizen with a beautiful mind.

I showed you that for every one of him, there's dozens of extremely wealthy people making extremely positive impacts.

and the back-room deals did happen (there's documented evidence of it); comparing that to "reports" of Obama being a socialist fascist muslim kenyan dictator is beyond dishonest, you stupid fuck.

The evidence you're referring to is not only quite small, somewhat questionable even in origin, it shows concessions by both sides relating directly to the actual policy.

The "back-room" claim is absurd, and the claim that it's based on campaign contribution is unsubstantiated, and a reach even for the far left.

The reasonable people are pointing out not ridiculous bullshit claims like that, but the reality that they can advertise effectively against him if he goes against them too far.

Which, again, hey, go right ahead and legislate morality, as long as it's something you disagree with, right?

[archibaldcrane]

The "back-room" claim is absurd, and the claim that it's based on campaign contribution is unsubstantiated, and a reach even for the far left.

It's not so much that he got a payoff to do something, it's that he understands that doing the other thing would result in money being dumped into opponents of his allies.

[Kuya]

The far-left

[Plow]

other countries with less wealth inequality, better qualities of living, and more effective democracies do what you talk about in the first paragraph. but you, of course, seem to want to give all credit to capitalist superheroes with disproportionate wealth, as if we should be giving thanks to them everyday. laughable.

Yeah man, I forgot how Europe has stayed ahead of us with a couple thousand year head start through communism, while the capitalist empires have crumbled. And not through a superior infrastructure and smart investment with government spending, but by making their rich want to leave the country.

as for the second paragraph, that's already been covered with figures from cadsuane (iirc) demonstrating that moving up is incredibly unlikely. horation alger anecdotes are based on luck more than anything, you dense fuck.

Again, you just plain don't understand what you're seeing. Upward mobility has barely been addressed if at all in this thread. And if you want to argue that point, again, you've got entire industries to explain.

[Plow]

It's not so much that he got a payoff to do something, it's that he understands that doing the other thing would result in money being dumped into opponents of his allies.

They wouldn't bother, they'd simply campaign against them directly.

And we've got to make more laws to protect people from that, because most people are stupid enough to fall for it and start to disagree with Kuya and Beckwin.

[archibaldcrane]

They wouldn't bother, they'd simply campaign against them directly.

And we've got to make more laws to protect people from that, because most people are stupid enough to fall for it and start to disagree with Kuya and Beckwin.

Corporations aren't running for public office, how would they campaign against Obama's allies directly?

They wouldn't, they just run countless "issue ads" painting the vulnerable incumbents in whatever negative light they think would work, in order to further their own (in this case, the bottom line of big pharma corporations via preventing the US from negotiating for lower drug prices) agenda.

The argument that "we should make more laws to stop that" is, well, not particularly congruent with the Constitution as currently interpreted by the Supreme Court. Political speech, even as funded by multi-billion dollar corporations as it is, is perfectly legal - you'd have to amend the Constitution to get around that - i.e. not going to happen.

Be that as it is, increasing wealth disparity and the corresponding political power that wealth prescribes can be problematic.

[Plow]

Corporations aren't running for public office, how would they campaign against Obama's allies directly?

They wouldn't, they just run countless "issue ads" painting the vulnerable incumbents in whatever negative light they think would work.

That's what I mean >.> They don't have to bother with committing to a candidate, they can simply attack whoever disagrees.

The argument that "we should make more laws to stop that" is, well, not particularly congruent with the Constitution as currently interpreted by the Supreme Court. Political speech, even as funded by multi-billion dollar corporations as it is, is perfectly legal - you'd have to amend the Constitution to get around that - i.e. not going to happen.

Ya think?

Be that as it is, increasing wealth disparity and the corresponding political power that wealth prescribes can be problematic.

Answer me this:

If the pharmaceutical industry consisted entirely of coops, would they have less political power? Would they have less capability to throw around cash to destroy a shitload of campaigns?

The answer is no, not if they're an effectively run coop. They would have the exact same capabilities.

[archibaldcrane]

If the pharmaceutical industry consisted entirely of coops, would they have less political power? Would they have less capability to throw around cash to destroy a shitload of campaigns?

The answer is no, not if they're an effectively run coop. They would have the exact same capabilities.

And in this scenario, successful lobbying of the government would benefit a much larger number of citizens right? Since a co-op would have a more distributed income/wealth structure amongst the employees?

That's a good thing - that's more ideal, the government would be pressured into making decisions that positively influence a greater number of people.

[Plow]

And in this scenario, successful lobbying of the government would benefit a much larger number of citizens right? Since a co-op would have a more distributed income/wealth structure amongst the employees?

That's a good thing - that's more ideal, the government would be pressured into making decisions that positively influence a greater number of people.

...

I don't think you understand the problem with the pharmaceutical industry.

Pretty much all of the people that would be a part of the coops are already quite well off.

It's easy to stay that way when you overcharge massively due to intense anti-competitive measures and rip off insurance companies who in turn rip off the people that can't afford to be ripped off.

[Plow]

Just so you know, this is all just leading into a discussion on term limits.

[Rhinox]

But again, you're just doing a lot of projecting, sounding like a GOP stump speech with your cute little anecdotes about small business owners and the virtues of the rich because you're feeling attacked here due to your family's wealth. Get the fuck over it, Richie Rich.

^

[Beckwin]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/0..._n_258285.html

the far-left is totally lying about the will of the American people being compromised to appease a small minority of concentrated wealth.

[#686578]

those numbers are somewhat out of my ass

I would never go near your ass

numbers so that people could decide what was more important to them

I am most important to the important people

I've had an especially hard time finding numbers for the EU

I live in the US

[Kuya]

I was in a conference today that was discussing jobs, and in it related topics came up. Stanley Aronowitz, self styled radical, was giving the initial conference, and he discussed the great centralization of wealth, and he virtually discussed topics probably often covered by marxists although he didn't seem to consider himself a communist or a socialist. He discussed the weakening of labor as a political force and its reliance on political parties, particularly that it had become merely a recruting wing for the Democrats. That there is a declining supply of jobs in the job market, and not particularly because of recent events, but rather as this being a general trend. That the quality of these jobs, including pay, benefits, have been diminishing making for a supply of precarious jobs. That the technological revolution was less about things like the internet, and more about using technology to replace human labour.

He also mentioned the nature of wealth concentration, particularly he explained that the reason for wealth concentration is partially an abdication of labour. Meaning, labour in many industrialized countries gave up on calling an end to extreme inequality in return for social benefits provided by the State, this is why, he explained, Western Europe has all these benefits but substantial wealth concentration. In the case of the US, the circumtances aren't exactly the same, as labour had never been as strong in the US as in Western Europe. He did explain that two countries that still continue to believe and discuss equality as a serious goal is France and Greece.

All in all, the social scientists in this conference painted a bleak picture for anyone looking to enter the job market in these next few decades.