But there's no income inequality
 

The top 26 billionaires own $1.4 trillion — as much as 3.8 billion other people

Most of these mega-wealthy are American


taxing the wealthy as high as 70% doesn't sound so crazy now does it

Billionaire wealth has risen by an annual average of 13 percent since 2010 – six times faster than the wages of ordinary workers, which have risen by a yearly average of just 2 percent.

The number of billionaires rose at an unprecedented rate of one every two days between March 2016 and March 2017.


It takes just four days for a CEO from one of the top five global fashion brands to earn what a Bangladeshi garment worker will earn in her lifetime.

In the US, it takes slightly over one working day for a CEO to earn what an ordinary worker makes in a year.


It would cost $2.2 billion a year to increase the wages of all 2.5 million Vietnamese garment workers to a living wage. This is about a third of the amount paid out to wealthy shareholders by the top 5 companies in the garment sector in 2016.

who said there’s no income inequality? who??

the wealthy will always benefit more, when the economy grows.

all your stats, left out taxes paid by these people, how
much they give to charity, and how
many jobs they create.

they are not the cause of others’ poverty.


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Thanks for exposing this,darn that Trump. He must be the reason the Clinton family went from stealing from the White House to being fat cat millionaires.
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the clintons
absolutely sacked that place on the way out. ashtrays, light fixtures, everything that wasn’t nailed
down.
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It’s pretty funny you guys still cling to these falsehoods years later. Still losing sleep over Vince Foster?
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They probably heard it on infowars 😂😂😂😌😌😌
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it happened. they had to write a check to the national park service to reimburse them for the stuff they stole. sorry if you don’t like that.

as to billionaires, yes, obsessing over them is a really valuable use of time and energy. it’s not fair that we have wealthy people and poor people, but the wealthy people aren’t, for the most part, hurting anybody. they create wealth, they don’t steal it from others.

nobody is better off if they didn’t create that wealth. nobody. they pay some taxes, give some away, invest some, spend some. all of those things help everybody.
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Possibly you could ask Abraham Lincoln or Tucker Carlson about the difference between labor and capital.

Can you have one without the other and does balancing the two have any value.
Lincoln said “ Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
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i don’t have an issue with tweaking capital gains and dividend tax rates.

my point was, and i’m correct, that no one would
be better off if the
billionaires all burned their money.
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It’s called trickle up economics. It’s what made the middle class a powerhouse in the 50s
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You’re the only one I’ve ever heard suggest that as a solution for anything.
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then what’s the problem with income inequality? why are rich people
part of the conversation, when talking anout ending poverty? they didn’t cause poverty, and they aren’t the cure.
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come on. what made the
middle
class was the fact that american manufacturing was king. that made the middle class. we
manufactured everything.
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What did ceos and owners earn in proportion to their employees then vs now. What changed in tax laws to make this extreme difference now?

Think hard. You can do it.
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Tax them at 70% ... wont be long until the USA becomes the next Venezuela ... damn socialist idiots.....

Trump sure wishes this place was like Venezuela. He would love to be a dictator
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Married filing jointly under $165,000 which probably covers a lot of the lower middle class is 22% bracket, yet the rich are only paying 37% I think, I think that could go up and those millionaires are going to feel it. Not suggesting 70% which is crazy, but with the cost of living, school tuitions and medical expenses being what they are, a hit of 22% hurts those people much harder than the 37% to the rich.
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That’s because there was a higher value for labor then there is today. Guess what, the world evolved and we have to adapt.

You keep clamoring that creating wealth doesn’t take from the poor but that’s not really true. As the old adage goes, it takes money to make money. All the security and infrastructure that the taxpayer funds via government benefits the wealthy much more than the rest even considering their contributions. That’s a big reason why wealth inequality has continued to shift dramatically for the last 50 years and why the often brilliant Nebe noted wages for most working people are flat since the 1970s.
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Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device some of the biggest economic expansion we've ever had was when the tax rate was 70%. were we a socialist country when we had a 70% tax rate?

to funny talking about the clintons


but In the US, it takes slightly over one working day for a CEO to earn what an ordinary worker makes in a year.

and as on Cue Conservatives running to defend Corporations



Corporations have done to the american worker and the middle class

What the Airlines have done to Travel .

Smaller seats, charges for baggage , fees to book your seats ,fees for more leg room so on and so forth and our fellow Conservatives are using the classic argument the fear of socialist but have no fear of a Plutocracy or oligarchy

yet these same people who fear socialist Also see no danger in Trumps actions towards the CIA the FBI or the courts or his use of executive power ... you can't make these things up

it’s not ceos that destroyed the middle class. i did the math for walmart, if their ceo worked for free and gave his pay to the US workers, it worked out to like $35 a year. big whoop. ceo pay is disgusting, but it’s not a big line item on the balance sheet for a large company.

that’s what ‘thinking’ looks like. put down your copy of Chairman Maos Little Red Book and try it. stop crying about what someone else has. they aren’t taking anything away from you.
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you provided zero evidence thatbthe wealthy, writ large, arevtaking from the poor. everyone has the same access to roads and infrastructure.

yes it takes
money to make
money. but the wealthy don’t generally steal their seed
money, they inherit it. big difference.
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you’re saying security and infrastructure caused the pullback
ifnthe middle class?

wow..
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no one paid those rates, there were all kinds of ways around it. those were published rates, they weren’t the practical, effective rates. and again, that was after WWIi and we were the worlds
manufacturer. we aren’t anymore, and the shift has been brutal for the
middle class. it has very little to do with the wealthy, and everything to do with globalization. can’t fight that with tax rates on the rich.
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No one paid those rates because they reinvested the money back into the economy. Holy crap this isn’t rocket science.
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yet the modern average family struggling to make ends meet still has big screen tvs, cable/statellite, several cell phones, multiple gas guzzling cars, kids in expensive club sports, eat out more that any 70's family, have you seen what the average American family spends on Christmas?....in the 70's NOBODY in my neighborhood owned a new car or went on vacation very often and it was a pretty average neighborhood...you wanna go back to the 70's...Eben just likes the clothes

I certainly am not defending corporations, I hope you weren't referring to me. I pointed out the math, which shows clearly that while CEO pay is excessive, it's of no consequence to the rest of us. You can't make that wrong, by wishing it so.

Partly, and partly because of loopholes and deductions. So we have no idea what the impact would be, of implementing actual effective rates that high.

You're right it's not rocket science, it's elementary school arithmetic, which you have to abandon to be a liberal. Especially in CT.

Huh?
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Several things that made the middle class are different today.
People were trained and promoted from within.
Before we were married my wife rented an apartment in someone’s Vermont home that was the Head of one of the big brokerage houses on the NYSE
He started in the mailroom and worked his way up.
My father started in aerospace out of HS and worked his way up.
These guys knew what the people below them do and they were not just occupants of a cubicle.
Corporations acted as important members of communities and felt responsible to them and their employees and also their shareholders.
With the prevalence of the MBA
Shareholders have become #1 and employees and communities are just a somewhat necessary evil.
There were also strong unions that stood up for their members and increased wages and benefits which then raised opportunities across the board.
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Only an idiot would deny it happened. Not the Vince Foster part,but the stealing from the white house( which they paid for when caught).
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I know you are not so stupid that you would deny it happened. Educate yourself before spouting off like a fool would.even your fake news stations reported the story. But you may have missed it with Trump et al.
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“communities are a necessary evil”.

gimme a break. you spout off all these vague generalizations which can’t be proven nor disproven. i worked at aetna, travelers, and the hartford, all
werenterrific
corporate citizens.

you are correct when you say companies are leaner and
more efficient. the downside is reductions in employee perks. what you
conveniently
left out, is that the upside
is lower prices. do you never ship
for the best price? how do you suppose “best price” happens?
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Scott...I have to agree. Growing up poor in the 50's and 60's, my seven brothers and sisters and I were not poor but, our clothes were hand-me downs or from thrift shops, we never went out to eat anywhere, one car for my Dad to get to work, we ate mostly loaves of old bread that gets taken off the shelves. our shoes got new heels put on when they wore out. Most of all the kids I knew were skin and bone thin, overweight kids were a rarity. My parents would not accept welfare and felt the financial burden for raising us was their responsibility.


Knowing that I would never have anything unless I worked very hard for it, I worked and saved and at age 20 I bought and paid for an acre of land and the following year built a home on it for my bride and myself with no help from anyone. Glad I never got anything for free, I might have become a slacker.

Today I see so called poor people with all brand new clothes, sneakers, jewelry, cell phones, cars, getting their nails done, tatoos, buying booze, drugs, scratch tickets etc. and many, many of them are obese from all the junk food they eat.
I dont feel sorry for them...they feel entitled because look at all the rich people.

This is also a good point, we spend WAY, WAY too much money on crap.

It is amazing to me, how obsessed the left is with rich people. Who cares?

The trick is wanting what you have, not having what you want. The jealousy and laziness and entitlement is astounding.

You think corporations on a whole are better citizens than they were 50 years ago based on several large insurance companies
50 years ago minimum wage was $1.60
Trucks cost less? $2318
Medical care costs less? Less than $500 per capita
Housing costs less? $26600 average
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this is shameful...how was anyone supposed to live on this?

wow your towing the party line hard and like most Conservatives arguments are as simplistic and aimed at 1st grader understanding of the world using the usual talking points jealousy and laziness and entitlement


The top 26 billionaires own $1.4 trillion — as much as 3.8 billion other people

The richest 1 percent now owns more of the USA country’s wealth than at any time in the past 50 years...


But theres no issues ... everyone else is lazy and entitled Sure they are

It not that we hate rich people we dislike how they and their business model operate .. even with record profits they lock out workers over pay.. they game the system they strong arm cities and states to build stadiums promise employment at expense of the taxpayer close power plant and walk away leaving a blight for who else the Taxpayer to fit the bill... only the blind can't see rebirth of the business 1st mentality pushed by the right .

At one time worker and owner had a symbiotic relationship that was beneficial for both ..

Todays Business model the employer isn't thankful for their employees

they expect their employees to be thankful to them for all they have, and they dare not bite the hand that feed them or complain about benefits

NOT all companies FIT THIS PROFILE but more do than don't...

but jealousy and laziness and entitlement is a simpleton's argument Just like just build a wall ..

as is putting one heads in the sand saying everything is fine