Income Inequality Flash Video

[Kulindahr]

You cannot logically talk about income inequality--the subject of this thread-- without talking about the massive influx of new poor. You cannot talk about your boat filling with water without mentioning the hole in the bottom. The liberal answer is, don't plug the hole, leave the hole and pull down the sails.

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The "hole in the bottom", as you call it, is the government system of funneling wealth upward instead of outward.

Better, your analogy is wrong: the problem is not that there is a hole in the boat, the problem is that we have a boat with plenty of room for new passengers to join the cruise in comfort, except that half a percent of the passengers insist on keeping half the boat to themselves -- with the connivance of the crew.

[Kulindahr]

What about the influx of new rich? Of new educated? Of new knowledge, skills and innovation? Sugarplum, that's the ONLY way a country really ever evolves. And historically, that's definitely how the US has ALWAYS evolved - through influx of new people to bring new ideas and new blood. You think of hordes of barbaric brown people coming from the south when you say "immigration" when that's a negligibly small percentage of the actual immigration into the US.

I am an immigrant. [Text: Removed], but I am a highly skillful professional (so far, by all accounts, more skilled than you) and I benefit the community I am currently living in through my skills. I compete for every position I take same as everyone else, and I am picked because I bring competitive skills. Not because some black magic makes people ignore Americans in favor of evil immigrants.

Oh, and I'm also white. [Text: Removed]

This brings to mind another bit of information I learned in sociology class and have no reason to doubt continues to be the case: the value of education to immigrants far exceeds that to the "assimilated", a situation that pertains for roughly three generations; the s=result is that regardless of the educational level of adult immigrants, the general educational competence of the American public is raised by the children and grandchildren of those immigrants.

The Republican response to this has been to insist that educated visitors to this country, who are generally already 'assimilated' after just a few years, have to go to the back of the line and wait among the uneducated applicants for immigration... thus actually reducing the educational level of the general population.

[Kulindahr]

This thread is about the increasing mass of poor people at the bottom, who are, without doubt being held down by the need to compete for the jobs which do not require extensive education or skills.

The obvious solution, if that is the case, is that all those on the bottom should form one vast union in order to lock out additional poor workers, so that they can use the power of their common bond to demand higher incomes.

[tigerfan482]

Well, okay. But in terms of the number of persons granted permanent status, the number is closer to a million, yes?

Yes, but that's something completely different from the claim of letting in millions of immigrants every year. The actual number we let in is around half a million. The others are already here so don't count as people we're just letting in.

[TX-Beau]

It's also wrong to think that all migrant labor wants to live here. If they had a guaranteed, legal passage back and forth across the border, a butt load of them would come for the season, then go home. It would save them butt loads of cash. Fear of not being able to get back, makes them stay.

[maxpowr9]

The obvious solution, if that is the case, is that all those on the bottom should form one vast union in order to lock out additional poor workers, so that they can use the power of their common bond to demand higher incomes.

That sounds borderline fascist because the people already at the higher incomes will suppress the lower income people.

[TX-Beau]

Actually that sounds borderline borderline fascist.

[bankside]

Ah, the medical situation.... government licensing in that realm limits the supply of doctors in an insidiously subtle fashion. If you trace the supply of doctors back to its source, it turns out that the only body allowed by the government to certify medical schools is deliberately limiting the number of medical schools in order to keep the supply of doctors limited, in order to keep medical incomes high. The country needs more doctors, but can't produce them because the supply of schools for educating doctors is limited, and the number of students permitted at those schools also restricted.

That's why the first thing any health care legislation should have done was to break the unconstitutional monopoly on the supply of doctors by establishing two dozen new medical schools not under the control of the A.M.A.


Though perhaps I misunderstand the situation, because the problem actually must be that immigrants are screwing the system up....

Actually I have seen exactly that situation occur. My idiot province decided to elect a good conservative government in the early 90's that cut the budget not by making a careful analysis of each program and budget line, but by assuming each department was exactly 20% wasteful. Within departments and health authorities, they had a bit more discretion to divvy out the leftovers. In post-secondary education the universities cut medical school positions in half because its an expensive program. Within 5 years of turning out half the number of doctors, we had a doctor shortage and a professional medical association that was able to command a premium in their pay.

So that would be an example of "inefficiency…which governments may opt to do."

Certainly we need more doctors. But not any self-proclaimed doctor; some efficient regulation would still be a good thing to weed out the people we (or at least I) wouldn't want operating on me.

Another example would be taxi service. They use taxi licensing not to ensure drivers meet a professional standard, but to cater to a monopoly interest. It's not that regulation is a problem, it is the type of regulation.

[xbuzzerx]

A socialist loves other people's money because the have very little themselves. 'Go get your own' is my mentality.

Thank you for that fortune cookie bit of political wisdom [Text: Removed] Here's a word for you. Cognitive dissonance.

Generally speaking, there are approximately 1 million new immigrants (permanent residents) admitted to the US each year.

2011 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics (See Table 6)

In fairness though of that million, a fairly large amount are people with some kind of saleable or professional skill, frequently in fields lacking sufficient qualified applicants domestically (large numbers of Filipina nurses or medical support staff, as an example) and not all are from the third world or come in as the sort of "parasitic immigrant mass of unskilled labor" that Benvolio reduces all immigrants into.

[kev]

Don't listen to them Benvolio...there are lots of us here who agree with your premise and support you here at JUB. Maybe they just shy away from abuse.

Notice how no one has cited an example in history where communism or socialism ever has worked well in the long term.

On the other hand:



I know one thing...I am not going to work my ass off ad infinitum, just to have the financial rewards of my efforts handed off to someone else, any more than I would study hard in school, only to have my good grades given to someone else at the diminution of mine (to cite one example).

Just about everyone is a capitalist when it comes to their own money...and those who aren't tend to be nuns and monastics.

[kev]

[Quoted Post: Removed]

I don't want to say anything, but the teeth in your avatar are SO SEXY!!!

[Rolyo85]

Don't listen to them Benvolio...there are lots of us here who agree with your premise and support you here at JUB. Maybe they just shy away from abuse.

As well they should. [Text: Removed] Luckily for JUB, I have a high degree of certainty that you are, in fact, wrong in this claim ^_^ There's hardly a handful of you, and it's all adorably pitiful.

Notice how no one has cited an example in history where communism or socialism ever has worked well in the long term.

Most of north-western Europe. Not that you seem to have any notion of what "socialism" actually means. And Communism is a failed perversion of socialist ideas that nobody anywhere considers viable outside of a few strongholds of oppression that have nothing to do with Western civilization. Throwing that word around as if anyone on the left is supporting it, is about as misrepresenting as Benvolio's use of "immigrants" to say "undocumented, illegal, low-skill immigrants".

I know one thing...I am not going to work my ass off ad infinitum, just to have the financial rewards of my efforts handed off to someone else, any more than I would study hard in school, only to have my good grades given to someone else at the diminution of mine (to cite one example).

Just about everyone is a capitalist when it comes to their own money...and those who aren't tend to be nuns and monastics.

Actually, you will, because there's no way for you to not pay taxes. I find it hilarious that people keep bitching about paying taxes, when they use the benefits of those daily. But that's the Libertarian spirit - "I only want to pay for what I personally use, and nothing moire". Yet you don't pay health insurance only when sick, eh?

[Benvolio]

Immigrants who want socialism or social democracy should go to such a country, should they not? Voting for high taxes on Americans to pay for socialist programs for themselves is just begging. Not the quality of people we should be bringing in.

[Rolyo85]

Immigrants who want socialism or social democracy should go to such a country, should they not? Voting for high taxes on Americans to pay for socialist programs for themselves is just begging. Not the quality of people we should be bringing in.

Ignoring your implied attack at me, are you aware that immigrants CAN'T vote for anything in America? EVERYONE who votes for "high taxes on America to pay for socialist programs" is ALSO American.

[Kulindahr]

I know one thing...I am not going to work my ass off ad infinitum, just to have the financial rewards of my efforts handed off to someone else, any more than I would study hard in school, only to have my good grades given to someone else at the diminution of mine (to cite one example).

The problem is that under the present tax system, set up by Republicans, you're doing exactly this, and that will continue to be the case so long as people with lots of unearned income are rewarded for getting money they didn't work for.

[Kulindahr]

I find it hilarious that people keep bitching about paying taxes, when they use the benefits of those daily. But that's the Libertarian spirit - "I only want to pay for what I personally use, and nothing moire". Yet you don't pay health insurance only when sick, eh?

That's not the "libertarian spirit", it's the propertarian spirit. Actual libertarians support what increases liberty for all, which means (in general) anything that hinders or reduces the concentration of power in any institution at all.

[Rolyo85]

It's barely on the political radar and already there are major divisions in it?

[Benvolio]

That's not the "libertarian spirit", it's the propertarian spirit. Actual libertarians support what increases liberty for all, which means (in general) anything that hinders or reduces the concentration of power in any institution at all.

Alas, your brand of "libertarianism" is a prescription for authoritarianism. High taxes as "liberty" is Orwellian double speak.

[Centexfarmer]

Alas, your brand of "libertarianism" is a prescription for authoritarianism. High taxes as "liberty" is Orwellian double speak.

No Sir, it shows me that he's attempting to work within the current construct.

Because within that construct it accepts accountability, and then attempts to move forward.

[xbuzzerx]

What a pile of crap... I am a US voting citizen. And yes, I'll continue to vote for higher taxes on the rich. Meanwhile what you have advocated is destroying this country.

But Giancarlo, cutting taxes on the rich creates JOBS! Don't you remember that booming economy resulting from Bush's policies? *Crickets chirping*