The rich get richer and the rest get 'let them eat cake' by 1kiki

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

The rich get richer and the rest get 'let them eat cake'

POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Thursday, January 6, 2011 15:50
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Sunday, January 2, 2011 7:32 PM

sig

theres a flaw in your division of labor theory. ultra rare specialties are things that people are willing to travel a great distance to receiv. such as my sisters cwncer treatments.

no industrial age technology was required to maintain large cities, which haveexisted for thousands of years. im not sure the theory holds up. i think cities existed to facilitate commerce, but are largely now obsolete becauseof the internet.

re carbon footprint, rural communities have none, because the carbon is consumed by the neighboring trees. co2 pollution is a local, not a global, problem. and could be soblic trq.sporta

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Sunday, January 2, 2011 8:57 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

DT- Socialism is an economic structure. That's why some nations are described (albeit inaccurately) as socialist democracies.

Also, AFA ultra-rare specialties: "People" are not willing or able to travel long distances, bc most people aren't rich. In any case, my point was that it takes a substantially-SIZED population to support rare specialties.

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Monday, January 3, 2011 8:07 AM

DREAMTROVE

Sig

Yes, you're right. But given the nature of socialism, it requires a certain state structure, a form of govt, which is what I should have said, as it's more accurate.

Ergo, you could have capitalist anarchy but you really couldn't have socialist anarchy. True, some socialist states approach anarchy, but that's not by design

I disagree with your premise that large populations are required for hyper specializations, not that I think that hyper specialization is nec. a good thing. Here I go to do some cancer research. Fortunately, the other researchers are online, though many are not in large cities, and more fortunately, though I have no specialty in the field, I'm fairly familiar with it. The sum of human knowledge is not yet infinite, and humans who study only one thing tend to make radical errors and oversights.

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Thursday, January 6, 2011 7:39 AM

TWO

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

If every year, the government sent certain Americans -- from the richest CEO to the greenest public-school teacher -- a check covering 30 percent of their health-care costs, we'd think that a bit weird. We'd think it much weirder if the checks are only sent to the workers who happened to be at firms that offered health-care benefits while the jobless didn't get a check. Let them eat cake!

Yet that's pretty much exactly what America does. We just hide it in the tax code rather than write it on a check. And because we hide it in the tax code, the people who're benefiting don't really know they're benefiting.

The same thing is being done with mortgages. If you have a mortgage, you get the equivalent of a check mailed to you once a year at tax time. Bigger house means bigger check. If you're too poor to have a mortgage, there's no check for you. Let them eat cake.

If you want to know about the hundreds of billions in “tax expenditures,” as these welfare checks for well-off are known, see the database at http://subsidyscope.org/tax_expenditures/

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, January 6, 2011 12:04 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_overseas_hiring; _ylt=AkCc.wK2fz8SOAjYISp2Lsqs0NUE; _ylu=X3oDMTNpNTNzb3M0BGF zc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAxMjI4L3VzX292ZXJz ZWFzX2hpcmluZwRjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdW xhcgRjcG9zAzIEcG9zAzcEcHQDaG9tZV9jb2t lBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcnkEc2xrA3doZXJlYXJldGhlag

Where are the jobs? For many companies, overseas

Corporate profits are up. Stock prices are up. So why isn't anyone hiring?
Actually, many American companies are — just maybe not in your town. They're hiring overseas, where sales are surging and the pipeline of orders is fat.
All but 4 percent of the top 500 U.S. corporations reported profits this year, and the stock market is close to its highest point since the 2008 financial meltdown.
But the jobs are going elsewhere.
The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, says American companies have created 1.4 million jobs overseas this year, compared with less than 1 million in the U.S. The additional 1.4 million jobs would have lowered the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.9 percent, says Robert Scott, the institute's senior international economist.
"There's a huge difference between what is good for American companies versus what is good for the American economy," says Scott.
Other economists, like Columbia University's Sachs, say multinational corporations have no choice, especially now that the quality of the global work force has improved. Sachs points out that the U.S. is falling in most global rankings for higher education while others are rising. "We are not fulfilling the educational needs of our young people," says Sachs. "In a globalized world, there are serious consequences to that."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101228/bs_nm/us_usa_economy

Consumer confidence slips as home prices decline

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Consumer confidence< http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101228/bs_nm/us_usa_economy> unexpectedly deteriorated in December, while prices of U.S. single-family homes fell almost double the expected pace in October, tempering growing optimism on the economy's recovery.
The Conference Board, an industry group, said its index of consumer attitudes slipped to 52.5 in December from an upwardly revised 54.3 in November. The median of forecasts from analysts polled by Reuters was for a reading of 56.0.
Separate data on Tuesday showed the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas declined 1 percent in October from September on a seasonally adjusted basis. It was the fourth straight monthly decline and steeper than the 0.6 percent decrease economists expected. The fall pushed the index 0.8 percent below its year-earlier level, the first year-on-year drop since January.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101228/bs_nm/us_usa_retail

Investor doubts linger over holiday sales upside

By Phil Wahba Phil Wahba – 33 mins ago
NEW YORK (Reuters) – New sales data confirm that U.S. retailers are poised to show their best holiday season in three years, but investors seemed unimpressed as concerns mount that shoppers will pull back in the new year.
Shoppers might be spending more freely this year, but they remain worried about the job market with unemployment hovering near the 10 percent mark. In the latest snapshot of consumer attitudes released on Tuesday, consumer confidence deteriorated unexpectedly last month, while prices of U.S. single-family homes fell almost double the expected pace in October.
Shoppers themselves have signaled they will cut back after the holidays, and a fierce blizzard on the U.S. East Coast just after Christmas may have already dampened their appetite for extra spending.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-12-28-1Ajobless28_ST_N.htm

U.S. changes how it measures long-term unemployment

So many Americans have been jobless for so long that the government is changing how it records long-term unemployment.
Citing what it calls "an unprecedented rise" in long-term unemployment, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics< http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Organizations/Government+Bodi
es/Bureau+of+Labor+Statistics> (BLS), beginning Saturday, will raise from two years to five years the upper limit on how long someone can be listed as having been jobless.
The change is a sign that bureau officials "are afraid that a cap of two years may be 'understating the true average duration' — but they won't know by how much until they raise the upper limit," says Linda Barrington, an economist who directs the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell University< http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Organizations/Schools/Cornell
+University>'s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
The change will not affect how the unemployed are counted or the unemployment rate is computed nor how long those eligible for unemployment benefits receive them.
Long-term unemployment has grown markedly over the past few years. The BLS says the average length of unemployment has increased from 29.4 weeks in November 2009 to 34.5 weeks last month. Nearly 10% of the USA's 15.1 million jobless have been looking for work for two years or more.

http://www.alternet.org/story/149239/3_reasons_right-wing_lies_about_j
oblessness_stick/

3 Reasons Right-Wing Lies About Joblessness Stick

December 17, 2010 During the recent fight over extending unemployment benefits, conservatives trotted out the shibboleth that says the program fosters sloth. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., for instance, said added unemployment benefits mean people are “encouraged not to go look for work.” Columnist Pat Buchanan said expanding these benefits means “more people will hold off going back looking for a job.” And Fox News’ Charles Payne applauded the effort to deny future unemployment checks because he said it would compel layabouts “to get off the sofa.”
Of course, this story line makes no sense. From liberal Paul Krugman to archconservative Alan Greenspan, economists agree that joblessness is not caused by unemployment benefits. With five applicants for every job opening, the overarching problem is a lack of available positions—not a dearth of personal initiative.
Why, then, is the myth so resonant that polls now show more than a third of America opposes extending unemployment benefits? Part of it is the sheer ignorance that naturally festers in a country of cable-TV junkies. But three more subtle forces are also at work.
First, there’s what psychologists call the Just-World Fallacy—the tendency to believe the world is inherently fair. Narcissism is also a factor. In a nation that typically dehumanizes the destitute Other with epithets like “welfare queen” and “white trash,” our self-centered culture leads the slightly less destitute to ascribe their own relative success exclusively to superhuman greatness. You remain in a job, says the myth, because you are better than the jobless. Finally, there’s raw fear—arguably more powerful than even arrogance. With the labor-market news downright frightening, the still-employed are understandably pining for a defense mechanism to cope with persistent layoff anxieties. The myth of the lazy unemployed provides exactly that—a calming sensation of control.
The trouble, though, is that the whole narrative averts our focus from the job-killing trade, tax-cut and budget policies that are really responsible for destroying the economy. And this narrative, mind you, is not some run-of-the-mill distraction. The myth of the lazy unemployed is what duck-and-cover exercises and backyard nuclear shelters were to a past era—an alluring palliative that manufactures false comfort in the face of unthinkable disaster. Only now, our fate isn’t being dictated to us by faraway Soviets—we could actually prevent a future apocalypse if more of us just accepted reality and demanded the right kind of change here at home.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110104/pl_ac/7523248_a_shaky_economy_and_
an_uncertain_future

A Shaky Economy and an Uncertain Future

I am 55 and spent nearly thirty years in accounting.
The package of health care changes known as Obamacare< http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110104/pl_ac/7523248_a_shaky_economy_and_
an_uncertain_future> provides us with some hope. The costs of the wife's medications put her into the Medicare Part D donut hole< http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ac/pl_ac/storytext/7523248_a_shaky_ec
onomy_and_an_uncertain_future/39476997/SIG=11k6omaes/*http:/www.healthcare.gov/news/blog/donuthole.html> in 2010, and she was out of pocket the $600 a month that her prescriptions cost. The Affordable Care Act will close the donut hole in the next few years. In 2011, it promises to save my wife about half of her costs in 2010. The Republicans have vowed to dismantle Obamacare.
My wife is disabled due to a heart attack and several strokes and one of the main reasons I have not worked full time in the last three years is that I provide a certain degree of care for her on a daily basis.
My health insurance and my wife's Medicare premium went up in 2011. Mine went up about 10 percent and hers went up an equal amount. Ouch! Neither of us is getting healthier and we both use the insurance frequently. The co-pays alone amounted to about $1,500 in 2010. My 2011 premium will be $257 a month and hers will be $200.
We were comfortably middle class until the wife got ill. Now we are at or below the poverty line, with modest savings and a house mortgage. Our financial future in uncertain, and the shaky economy worries us both. We hope for a robust economy and the increased opportunities that will bring. With no children, living in the car with our cats may be one of our future options.

http://www.examiner.com/populist-in-national/poll-most-americans-say-t
ax-the-rich-to-balance-the-budget

Most Americans say tax rich to balance budget: poll

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sixty-one percent of Americans polled would rather see taxes for the wealthy increased as a first step to tackling the deficit, the poll showed. The next most popular way -- chosen by 20 percent -- was to cut defense spending. Four percent would cut the Medicare government health insurance program for the elderly, and 3 percent would cut the Social Security retirement program< http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110103/pl_nm/us_usa_taxes_poll>, the poll showed.
Republicans, who this week take control of the House of Representatives, want to extend all Bush-era tax cuts "permanently" for the middle class and wealthier Americans. They are also demanding spending cuts < http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110103/pl_nm/us_usa_taxes_poll> to curb the $1.3 trillion deficit.

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Thursday, January 6, 2011 12:12 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

when someone advocates socialism, i urge not doing so because it is neither popular nor a good idea

Is that b/c you think the capitalism we have does so much better? I ask b/c all of the data that I see (some of which I posted above) and the logical result of accumulation of wealth (which is depression) all indicate that capitalism does very well for a very few and very badly for everyone else. And, if you support capitalism, do you have any EVIDENCE that capitalism is so great for nearly all of us?

'If I cannot ask 'What's in it for me?' then I am a slave.'

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Thursday, January 6, 2011 12:50 PM

DREAMTROVE

Kiki

Why do you assume that a non-proponent of socialism is ergo a proponent of capitalism. They are essentially the same thing, as I said in my post, and have said many times.

Also, I made my reasons very clear. A lot of people in my family were killed under socialism because of the dictatorial nature and the absolute concentration of power, under more than one socialist system. Since a quarter of a billion people have been killed by socialism, most people will have lost relatives, friends, etc.

It's also worth noting that small socialist govts. like cambodia, iraq, burma, n. korea and so many others are no better than large ones. Socialism, as a system, is terrible. Most of my relatives were killed by Nazis, but objectively, I don't even think anymore that they were the worst form of socialism. Mao and Stalin were probably worse, as was Pol Pot.

If you scan all the socialist govts. there always were, you find it never gets any better.

Advocating socialism is very much like advocating death. Which people do. Remember the whole "Right to die" campaign the dems ran in 2004? It was their answer to right to life. Personally, I choose life between those two.

So no, I'm not advocating capitalism, I'm rejecting socialism. Once I've narrowed it down to "not socialism" there's a lot more to choose from.

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Thursday, January 6, 2011 1:30 PM

KANEMAN

Quote:
Originally posted by two:
If every year, the government sent certain Americans -- from the richest CEO to the greenest public-school teacher -- a check covering 30 percent of their health-care costs, we'd think that a bit weird. We'd think it much weirder if the checks are only sent to the workers who happened to be at firms that offered health-care benefits while the jobless didn't get a check. Let them eat cake!

Yet that's pretty much exactly what America does. We just hide it in the tax code rather than write it on a check. And because we hide it in the tax code, the people who're benefiting don't really know they're benefiting.

The same thing is being done with mortgages. If you have a mortgage, you get the equivalent of a check mailed to you once a year at tax time. Bigger house means bigger check. If you're too poor to have a mortgage, there's no check for you. Let them eat cake.

If you want to know about the hundreds of billions in “tax expenditures,” as these welfare checks for well-off are known, see the database at http://subsidyscope.org/tax_expenditures/

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

You work off the assumption that I owe the federal government my money or the state for that matter. Even with your nonsense about mortgages...even after deductions those of us that own homes pay thousands more a year in taxes..property taxes etc then you apartment jockeys..I don't make a penny owning my home, believe me it was a hell of a lot cheaper too rent. However the government gets plenty of revenue from me just for buying my home...literally in the tens of thousands when all is said and done....I'm so glad to know i have a hidden check somewhere...fucking idiot.

The tax code is not first base. It is not devine. Would you like a non-home owner get a property deduction? See, I don't see you up in arms that I don't get an EIC credit...credit!!! not deduction CREDIT....

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Thursday, January 6, 2011 1:37 PM

TWO

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

kaneman: If incomes for the middle class had been growing fast for the last 30 years, we would not be bitching about “Let them eat cake” and worrying about who is getting the biggest tax breaks (home owners or EIC Earned Income Credit?). It used to be the case that monetary policy errors were two-sided. Sometimes wages grew too fast (inflation) and sometimes they grew too slowly (recession), but since 1980 we’ve only ever erred in one direction and experienced three labor market recessions and zero outbursts of inflation. In an ideal world, monetary policy never errs and you have neither recessions nor inflation. But if monetary policy errs in an unbalanced direction, how can wage stagnation not result?

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, January 6, 2011 1:53 PM

KANEMAN

You use tax cut as if the government is giving those that recieve it a present. You have an underlying assumption that the gov. owns all our property and what they allow us to keep is an unfair gift.

At the end of the year I pay thousands in taxes...despite any deductions. I am a positive generator of revenue for the state. There is no welfare in a homeowner's taxes.

Now an EIC recipient is the welfare case. The gov. not only gives them all there with-holdings back. They then give that person my money on top of it. I understand if someone makes crap for money and not forcing a tax burden on that person, fine. But how in the world is it just for the gov. to give the property of another to that person. At the barrel of a gun? I think most homeowners deserve a tax break(not cut), while all EIC recievers should never get a penny they did not earn...no tax, fine. My money...not so much.

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Thursday, January 6, 2011 1:58 PM

TWO

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Give me two seconds while I research your IP 24.147.117.35 . . . . .
Okay, I'm done. Your tax bills have all been set to zero in 2011. There's no need to to pay the Federal, State, County, and Local Governments. Are you happy now? Do you feel a burden lifted from your shoulders? One that was always too heavy for you to bear? And I fixed this for you because I like you. Any tax bills for the rest of the year can be thrown into the trash.

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, January 6, 2011 2:02 PM

KANEMAN

Really? You are alright two......I like your style.

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Thursday, January 6, 2011 2:09 PM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
In any case, my point was that it takes a substantially-SIZED population to support rare specialties.

The human population is already substantially sized.

With proper communication technology, some levels of expertise can now be shared across great distances that wasn't possible before. There is even less imperative for large urban structures nowadays.

Not everyone is so lucky to be able to live in the exact city where the specialist is. That is, living in an urban setting doesn't mean you get expertise. If you live in NYC, but your specialist is in San Francisco, you still have to travel. People who need rare specialties ALREADY travel all over the country or the world to have access to certain expertise. It is just a fact of life.

Can't Take (my gorram) Sky
------
Everything I say is just my opinion, not fact.

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Thursday, January 6, 2011 3:37 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Why do you assume that a non-proponent of socialism is ergo a proponent of capitalism.

I didn't, which is why I posted 'if' ...

Lots and lots of people died under the endless Mayan wars and slaughters; a high percentage died during the Crusades mentioned above (though the numbers were smaller than today); feudalism which existed until recently claimed a high percentage of serfs to malnutrition, disease, war and predation by the powerful; 24,000 children die every day from poverty-related causes tho the world produces enough food to feed all and fresh water is easily and cheaply provided ... and while those older societies were ultimately not survivable and died out, socialism doesn't seem to be doing that any time soon which makes me think it's not as deadly. So I'm guessing your issue with socialism is strictly personal since I don't see you railing against all the other deadly social structures. I will file that opinion away under that category.

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Thursday, January 6, 2011 3:50 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Oh, just another factoid - there are an estimated 70,000 chemicals in use by industry today, and only a few dozen have ever been tested for health effects and/ or environmental effects. I was curious to find out that the quantity of high volume chemicals (only) in use in the US is over a million pounds a year, from this article:

Abstract
Thousands of high production volume (HPV) chemicals are used in the US at rates exceeding 450000 kg (1 million pounds) per year, yet little is known about their fates during wastewater treatment and upon release into the environment. We utilized a recently introduced empirical model to predict the fraction of the mass loading (in raw sewage) that is expected to persist in digested sludge following conventional municipal treatment of chemical-laden sewage. The model requires only two readily available input parameters, a compound's log KOW value and a dimensionless curve fitting parameter (pfit). Following refinement of the fitting parameter and cross-validation of the model using the Jackknife method, we predicted the mass fractions of 207 hydrophobic HPV chemicals (log KOW of ≥4.0) that are expected to accumulate in digested municipal sludge during conventional wastewater treatment. Using this screening approach in conjunction with information from toxicity databases, we identified 11 HPV chemicals that are of potential concern due to (i) their propensity to accumulate and persist in sludge (>50% of mass loading), (ii) unfavorable ecotoxicity threshold values, and (iii) structural characteristics suggestive of environmental persistence following release of these HPV chemicals on land during biosolids recycling. The in silico screening approach taken in this study highlights existing environmental monitoring needs and may guide risk management strategies for biosolids disposal.

So, does anyone else think this massive chemical experiment launched on the world (in the name of private profit) might just possibly be a bad idea?

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