Thursday 18th of April 2024
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keeping up with the joneses...

catching up with the joneses
Income Inequality: Too Big to IgnoreBy ROBERT H. FRANK

PEOPLE often remember the past with exaggerated fondness. Sometimes, however, important aspects of life really were better in the old days.

During the three decades after World War II, for example, incomes in the United States rose rapidly and at about the same rate — almost 3 percent a year — for people at all income levels. America had an economically vibrant middle class. Roads and bridges were well maintained, and impressive new infrastructure was being built. People were optimistic.

By contrast, during the last three decades the economy has grown much more slowly, and our infrastructure has fallen into grave disrepair. Most troubling, all significant income growth has been concentrated at the top of the scale. The share of total income going to the top 1 percent of earners, which stood at 8.9 percent in 1976, rose to 23.5 percent by 2007, but during the same period, the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage declined by more than 7 percent.

Yet many economists are reluctant to confront rising income inequality directly, saying that whether this trend is good or bad requires a value judgment that is best left to philosophers. But that disclaimer rings hollow. Economics, after all, was founded by moral philosophers, and links between the disciplines remain strong. So economists are well positioned to address this question, and the answer is very clear.

Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, was a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow. His first book, “A Theory of Moral Sentiments,” was published more than 25 years before his celebrated “Wealth of Nations,” which was itself peppered with trenchant moral analysis.

Some moral philosophers address inequality by invoking principles of justice and fairness. But because they have been unable to forge broad agreement about what these abstract principles mean in practice, they’ve made little progress. The more pragmatic cost-benefit approach favored by Smith has proved more fruitful, for it turns out that rising inequality has created enormous losses and few gains, even for its ostensible beneficiaries.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/business/17view.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

licking the road tar for a feed...

Mr Brown says he has enough trouble budgeting as it is.

‘Imagine if money was evenly spread, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. The rich are rich because they are good with money, which is why they should be entrusted with the vast bulk of it, and by ensuring what trickles down to me is finite, they teach me how to budget it’s like pocket money.’

Mr Brown says trickle down theory is proof that capitalism works for the poor.

‘There’s an old view that if you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows. And as a sparrow myself, I’m happy feasting on my share of the oats.’

Poor people can celebrate Thank the Rich Day by making a donation at their local Business Roundtable castle. Donations over $15 will receive free shoeshine.

http://thestandard.org.nz/grateful-poor-to-thank-rich-for-trickle-down-wealth/

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There has been a good deal of discussion centred on the question of whether anyone can point to a nation or empire that implemented 'Trickle Down Economics' and saw wealth actually trickle. In reviewing the issue I see two separate issues, and plan to treat them in the two parts of this essay.

PART I: What is meant (or at least what is commonly understood) by the term 'Trickle Down Economics'. And from that, what are examples that will be accepted by the parties to the discussion. In other words, let's see if we can agree about what we are talking about, and agree on specific examples.

PART II: How to evaluate a specific example, or what I call the use and misuse of statistics. The earlier exchange generated a "textbook example" of the misuse of statistics about the recent US. And what should be the basis of comparison? Should one country be compared to another? Or one time period in history to another. More on this later.

http://www.bigissueground.com/politics/blair-trickledownreagan.shtml

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"if you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows????"... Ah the licking the road tar for a thankful feed...

 

Good One Gus.

The most powerful weapon in the hands of the rich and the rich only, is the media of all types - and increasing. 

Who tells us whether we are well off or not?

Ignoring paid advertising by the rich – who tells us who to vote for with free information called Opinions?

How did we know when Howard decided to pre-emptively invade Iraq? And who advised us that such an act was kosher and warranted?  And who did the same in the US and the UK?

When the media told us (after the assassination) that Kevin Rudd MIGHT have done some good things - who prevented that message - or any other pro labor message - from getting though to the voting public?

Who built up Julia Bishop and - when she was “ordained” - immediately began tearing her to pieces with lies and good old Opinions?

Who took a fascist thug who could barely tie his own shoelaces without making some stupid mistake [and then blaming Labor] and rebuilt an image of a tough politician with only the Howard doctrine to guide him?  When in truth he couldn’t punch his way out of a wet paper bag?

This remade Murdoch Frankenstein completely disrespects women and believes that they should only be employed at home.  He said that the Parental Leave Legislation would only pass over his dead body. He stabbed his leader in the back just as effectively as Julia was accused of.

The only policy that Abbott used in the almost fatal Australian federal election last - was the unsubstantiated and exaggerated “failures of the Labor Stimulus procedures”.  While these procedures saved hundreds of thousands of jobs and avoided the otherwise world wide recession, who was it who put to the people that, since none of them had been disadvantaged – just what did Labor achieve? Only a comfortable and uninformed electorate would believe that since the world recession was at least known.

Back to the subject of the rich and the “Horses’ oats”.  There is no such well circulated media anymore that can possibly be controlled and owned by people of the middle or lower classes.  

Of course the rich own our ears, our eyes and our information which gives them complete power over what we are allowed to know and what we are not.  And the hypocrites scream at the suggestion of censorship when that is exactly what they are doing to the Australian people.

The subservience of the Howard “New Order” and its childish suggestion that the media should abide by the Charter using the “honour system” has not only increased the wealth of the Murdochracy and its many tentacles but has placed Australians at the mercy of a multi-national predator who can only be restrained by the Federal Government.  And thereby lays the reason for his ferocious anti-Labor and pro Liberal puppets campaign.

Who supported a PM candidate who had no policies other than to be negative about anything the government might say or do?  And who didn’t inform the public? Fair dinkum. NE OUBLIE.  

 

cleverly organised theft

That America, preparing in two weeks to elect a new House of Representatives and replace a third of the Senate, is riddled with conservatives who consider Obama a socialist horror show is hardly a secret. But if some dismiss disciples of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party as ignorant "wing-nuts", they should know this: their views are but nothing compared to what wealthy, highly educated conservatives think.

It might not be surprising that America's wealthy would vote against the country's left-wing party. But what is striking is that Mr Broadhead and his ilk are having a real impact on this election, and proving a significant drag on the President, who has been repeatedly hammered by Republicans for failing to help entrepreneurs. These are people who have access to politicians, and the money to influence them. Mr Broadhead, 74, who belongs to a possibly even posher beach club south of here called Lost Tree, admits coyly that he has been giving generously ahead of the 2 November elections.

The outsized influence of the rich has provoked howls of anger amongst the left-wing commentariat. "The craziness has gone mainstream," Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times last month. "When it comes to defending the interests of the rich, it seems, the normal rules of civilised (and rational) discourse no longer apply... A belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it's their money, and they have the right to keep it."

But that viewpoint has not really gained much traction. And what the better-off have to say – rarely offering examples or evidence – is also a reminder of a broader perception that this White House has allowed to fester: that it is anti-business.

When Mr Obama went this year to explain his financial reform bill to Wall Street, he got a cold reception. When the legislation was passed, tongues wagged when he declined to invite the heads of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to attend the signing.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/americas-seriously-wealthy-step-up-the-pressure-on-obama-2109447.html

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Gus: well! The policies of organised greed (capitalism) have given a virtual "carte blanche" to the rich to do whatever to scrooge the loot and give crumbs to keep the proletariat quiet. But while it half-worked for kings and peasants till a revolution came along, the "caring crumbs boundaries" of greed were soon broken by greed itself. The structure of wealth was invaded by bigger thieves... The private wealth of the rich grew larger, the public debt grew larger and the private debt of the poor grew larger, while the environment degraded from lack of care. It became a point at which the trickle effect was no more than an illusion. Not only that, the wealth had been so overvalued by the rich trying to rob each other, that even the rich had to loose a bit of ballast.

The rich, still overly rich, so annoyed with their own financial crisis creation by sucking more out of the system that there was in it — are now being "forced" to share a bit more trickle-down — that they are frothing up revolution amongst the population of indebted strugglers towards their enemy: a government in charge of reorganising a fairer trickling-down... And we all know that the Fairness Fairy is the enemy of greed... And the rich have always had the knack to dangle the illusion wealth for everyone to aspire too, while hidding the fact it's cleverly organised theft...

For the rich to organise the poor to fight a revolution on behalf of the rich... that is very clever.

untold riches?...

It has become unfashionable to talk about rising inequality in Australia. The mining boom is delivering untold riches, we are told, so shut up and let's enjoy the sunshine.

And yet, there are warning signs. In pockets of south-western Sydney, mortgage-holders struggle to meet payments. In the bush, farmers fight tooth and nail against water buybacks. Around kitchen tables, families decry the rising cost of living, as if living itself were increasingly a burden too expensive to bear. How can we be a rich nation and cry poor so often?

The answer, of course, is that the benefits of two decades of uninterrupted economic growth have not been shared evenly.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/were-all-worse-off-if-the-rich-get-richer-while-the-poor-get-poorer-20101019-16sgf.html

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Mining tax... That was a way to share the benefit of "our" resources a bit more evenly... We can't share "more evenly" with a trickle-down effect only. Crumbs on the road-tar is not a good look... We know that this proposition is a rort. Mining tax was the option for government in this area but with the help of media-murdoch and holes-in-the-ground barons, the little Libshit Abbott sunk the concept of "sharing" a bit more evenly.

this for starters...