Poverty rate rises as incomes decline - Census

[Wei Wu Wei]

Wee Wee and liberals rags are full of shit as usual. Many billionaires have had their clock cleaned this year. Carlos Slim has lost several billion since Jan 1st. Paulson made 5 billion in gold last year. This year his hedge fund switched gears to the stock market and now he is in the red. Bufett and Berky are not doing so hot either. So, I do not how, when or where the rich are getting richer in 2011 unless they have invested in gold or silver which is up around 30% this year; they are the best performing asset class.

You are using a few anecdotal examples, I'm talking about more general statistics. Overall, the wealthy in this country have been doing far better. Corporate profits are super high. The wealth gap is growing to near Depression levels.


The facts are the facts.

Here it is from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/08...ch-richer.html

Unemployment is at 9.2%, and the ruins of the U.S. housing market are still smoldering after the 2008 bonfire. But the planet's rich are getting richer, especially in the growing BRIC economies.

In fact, there are more rich people today than there were before the credit crisis destroyed Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns and nearly crippled the world's financial industry.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/02/...data-says-yes/

The Census Bureau divides household income into quintiles -- 20% each, from the lowest to the highest, with an added column that breaks out the top 5% of households. To assess how well each household quintile has done financially since 1975, I took the raw data for 1975 and 2001 (the last year available in this series) and calculated how much each quintile gained in income, both as a dollar amount and as a percentage of their 1975 income.

The results are striking. The vast majority of income increases has accrued to the top 20% and especially the top 5%. Here are some of the numbers, adjusted into 2001 dollars. (Note that this is an "apples to apples" analysis that is adjusted for inflation.)

The 400 wealthiest Americans have seen their annual incomes skyrocket over the last two decades while their tax rates have decreased dramatically, according to newly released data from the Internal Revenue Service. In fact, between 1992 to 2007, the annual incomes of this tiny club of über-rich increased seven-fold to a whopping $345 million on average, while their effective tax rate dropped by more than one-third from a 1995 peak of nearly 30%, the data shows.

....


"This just-disclosed data shows that government policy is concentrating incomes at the very top and steadily lowering their tax burden, thus shifting it on to Americans who in a lifetime don't make what these people make in a week," Johnston told DailyFinance.
....

Between 1992 to 2007, the last year included in the data, the income of the 400 richest Americans rose 637% to the average $345 million mark. During that same period, their effective tax rate declined by over one-third, from a peak tax rate of nearly 30% to 16.6%. Meanwhile, their share of all adjusted gross income increased from 0.52% to 1.59% over that same period.

If you want more stats just ask


Source: Economic Policy Institute, The State of Working America 2011, "Wealth Holdings Remain Unequal in Good and Bad Times."


Source: Congressional Budget Office, Average Federal Taxes by Income Group, “Average After-Tax Household Income,” June, 2010.

[Wei Wu Wei]

I stand by my statement. the evidence is as obvious as your flawed ideology.

what evidence?

[Wei Wu Wei]

Let me start by saying I watch Fox News all the time and listen to right wing radio so I can spot talking points a mile away.

Let me tell you how not to increase jobs in this country..... Create uncertainty,

Job growth is not about certainty. You can promise a business owner to drop his tax rates to 10% and he still won't hire people because it doesn't make any sense to do so.

This entire argument is based on the flawed fantasy that all employers are just itching to hire as many employees as they can, if only they had lower taxes or "more certainty". No businessman or woman worth their salt is going to hire people simply because they have more money coming in. That is absolutely stupid.

Businesses hire when demand increases, because they need the extra employees to meet the demand. Labor costs are some of the or sometimes the largest business expense, so no businessperson is going to hire people unless they need more people.

Let me repeat this: You don't hire people simply because you have more revenue, you only hire people to meet increased demand.

Working class people spend a far higher percentage of their income on goods or services than wealthy people (because they have to). So, if you increase the spending power of the working class, demand for goods and services will increase, and businesses will have to hire in order to keep up with business.

[Wei Wu Wei]

For the people saying we should lower taxes, how about this idea:

We lower taxes only on employers who actually do hire people. Raise taxes on the wealthy and on corporations, but if they hire people (domestically, not outsourced), then they get big tax credits that keep their effective tax rates where they are now (or maybe even lower).

This way, companies will be rewarded for hiring. That is an incentive. It's not an incentive to give them tax cuts and just sit around waiting for a decade for them to hire.

[lacarnut]

Let me start by saying I watch Fox News all the time and listen to right wing radio so I can spot talking points a mile away.



Job growth is not about certainty. You can promise a business owner to drop his tax rates to 10% and he still won't hire people because it doesn't make any sense to do so.

This entire argument is based on the flawed fantasy that all employers are just itching to hire as many employees as they can, if only they had lower taxes or "more certainty". No businessman or woman worth their salt is going to hire people simply because they have more money coming in. That is absolutely stupid.

Businesses hire when demand increases, because they need the extra employees to meet the demand. Labor costs are some of the or sometimes the largest business expense, so no businessperson is going to hire people unless they need more people.

Let me repeat this: You don't hire people simply because you have more revenue, you only hire people to meet increased demand.

Working class people spend a far higher percentage of their income on goods or services than wealthy people (because they have to). So, if you increase the spending power of the working class, demand for goods and services will increase, and businesses will have to hire in order to keep up with business.

Certainty or uncertainty by its self will not increase jobs. You pick one thing I said like a good lefty and run with it. How about the other statements I made such as the oil industry and selling land west of the MS river. This could create millions of jobs and release trillions of dollars. What say you? People that have jobs spend more than those on welfare and food stamps.

You have no plan to create jobs. All you have is negative left wing talking points. What is your plan. Tell you what, combine Obamacare, onerous regulations, the EPA breathing down your neck, higher taxes, and you will stifle job growth, a job killer. That is what causes UNCERTAINTY. Capiche. This administration is anti-business. Your listening to Fox must go in one ear and out the other cause there is no absorption there. BTW, I can spot left wing liberal talking points a mile away also.

[Starbuck]

The top 1%.

That's 3 million people. Almost none of whom work for anyone but themselves.

The message in the article is clear: Rich people have a lot more money than you do and they got it by taking it away from the poor.

I don't buy that.

Talking about the greed of the top 1% of wage earners (even though they are not wage earners) and then taxing the top 15% is the plan. Carter had the same plan, and it's a bad plan.

[AmPat]

Let me start by saying I watch Fox News all the time and listen to right wing radio so I can spot talking points a mile away.



Job growth is not about certainty. You can promise a business owner to drop his tax rates to 10% and he still won't hire people because it doesn't make any sense to do so.

This entire argument is based on the flawed fantasy that all employers are just itching to hire as many employees as they can, if only they had lower taxes or "more certainty". No businessman or woman worth their salt is going to hire people simply because they have more money coming in. That is absolutely stupid.

Businesses hire when demand increases, because they need the extra employees to meet the demand. Labor costs are some of the or sometimes the largest business expense, so no businessperson is going to hire people unless they need more people.

Let me repeat this: You don't hire people simply because you have more revenue, you only hire people to meet increased demand.

Working class people spend a far higher percentage of their income on goods or services than wealthy people (because they have to). So, if you increase the spending power of the working class, demand for goods and services will increase, and businesses will have to hire in order to keep up with business.

Starnge, demand for fat burgers was high in the Soviet block, somehow McDonalds wasn't interested in business there until after some big event. Hmmm, I wonder what that was?

[malloc]

Blah blah blah.....neo-communist bullshit.....blah blah blah.....to hell with rich...blah blah.

First, you really need to define this "rich" class you keep griping about. Do you mean the people who were the wealthiest percentage of people last generation, the generation before that, or this generation, because they aren't the same people. Or is it the percentage itself that you are mad at? Why don't you straighten that out for the group? Sine the greatest wealth one could acquire a few decades ago was measured in the millions, do you hate millionaires and billionaires, or since the greatest wealth is now in the billions, do you just hate billionaires? Can you put that in terms of buying power? Since a couple of decades ago, only the super rich could afford a cell phone, a sports car, and a 3,500 sq. ft. house, but now nearly a third of the country can afford all three at once, do you hate a third of the country for it?

Job growth is not about certainty. You can promise a business owner to drop his tax rates to 10% and he still won't hire people because it doesn't make any sense to do so.

Let me repeat this: You don't hire people simply because you have more revenue, you only hire people to meet increased demand.

Once again, you show your backside. You are wrong on both accounts because you don't hire people as a response to increased demand, nor do you hire people because you have higher revenues. You hire people to turn a profit, period. The equation is pretty simple: If I hire a new employee at $40,000 per year total compensation, which includes my employer's portion of taxes and expenses, am I going to see returns of greater than $40,000 per yer, based on the output of this employee? If you cannot determine the employers portion of that $40,000 total compensation package, how is an employer to know if qualification one The Profit Motive going to be satisfied? You sound like an idiot repeating this garbage all the time. Business certainty is paramount to job expansion, and no amount of ideological babble is going to change that fact of reality.

We lower taxes only on employers who actually do hire people. Raise taxes on the wealthy and on corporations, but if they hire people (domestically, not outsourced), then they get big tax credits that keep their effective tax rates where they are now (or maybe even lower).

Please take this stupid idea to it's logical maximum and conclusion before spouting about stupid this strong. Do you want to create more market distortion and bubbles, or do you want to improve the economy and the quality of life of the people with it? If you want to fix unemployment, the government has to get out of the way, not dig it's hands deeper into the productive sectors of society. That is the only prescription which cure these ills. Tax incentives may create certainty, but at the same time with artificially overstate the demand for employment, creating a rapid disconnect of demand and supply curves in many sectors. Overproduction can be just as dangerous, especially to savings and growth funds which benefit the retired and elderly, as underproduction can be. The market, left free of artificial stimulus only government can create, is quite capable of handling this downturn.

I have asked you to study real economics from real economists, classical, Keynesian, monetarists and Austrians alike. Yet you show up day after day with a bag full of sociological nonsense consisting of jumbled ideas set together by their ears, orchestrated by some ideologue hack. How do you expect to ever learn how real, real world economies, function?

[NJCardFan]

I always love the "there are no jobs" mantra. Last December, my wife left her job with the state to spend more time at home in preparation for our becoming foster parents. So she's not siting idle, she got a work from home job. Took her about 3 days between jobs to get this job. When that job stopped(Turbo Tax..ended after tax day) then it took her all of a few days to hook on with another work from home gig. So it's not that there are no jobs, it's that everyone wants a job where you do nothing and get paid to do it.