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Extreme policies lead to extreme outcomes.
Income inequality reached its highest level in more than half a century last year, as a record-long economic expansion continued to disproportionately benefit some of the wealthiest Americans.
A key measure of wealth distribution jumped to 0.485 in 2018, the Census Bureau said Thursday, its highest reading since the so-called Gini index was started in 1967. The gauge, which uses a scale between 0 and 1, stood at 0.482 a year earlier.
Work alone won't solve poverty—unless wages and earnings pick up substantially. It still takes government aid for families with children and others who do not earn enough, despite working 40 plus hours a week.
The most troubling thing about the new report, says William M. Rodgers III, a professor of public policy and chief economist at the Heldrich Center at Rutgers University, is that it "clearly illustrates the inability of the current economic expansion, the longest on record, to lessen inequality."
According to some research, US income inequality might be higher than it was during the Roman Empire, and pre-tax income inequality is as high as it was in the Roaring Twenties.
Income inequality is blamed on cheap labor in China, unfair exchange rates, and jobs outsourcing. Corporations are often blamed for putting profits ahead of workers. But they must to remain competitive. U.S. companies must compete with lower-priced Chinese and Indian companies who pay their workers much less. As a result, many companies have outsourced their high-tech and manufacturing jobs overseas. The United States has lost 20 percent of its factory jobs since 2000. These were traditionally higher-paying union jobs.
Service jobs have increased, but these are much lower paid.
If current policies touted as "decreasing globalism" in the US economy are trying to reduce income inequality, they're failing.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday October 06 2019, @03:15PM (1 child)
You talk so much and yet say so little, and everything you DO say amounts to "you're not actually making an argument 'cause I say you're not."
As said so many times before: I am not doing this for you or for your sake. No matter what I said you'd have the same reaction, because you're a useless little contrarian manbaby who has nothing in his life left except to justify his own shitheaded actions. No, all this is for sane people and the fence-sitters who will likely stumble across your poisonous propaganda and who could use some memetic vaccination so they don't fall for it.
I get it, you're another "asocial" type. That's fine, but you don't get to reap the benefits of society while prancing around demanding that someone show you your signature on the social contract. That contract is made of reality, not parchment, and your signature is the simple fact that you draw breath where and when you do. Reality changes around us, and those who refuse to adapt to it are a hinderance and eventually a danger to those who do.
Your entire argument boils down to "My particular idea of what I think capitalism is has worked well (mostly for me) so far, so anyone trying to change it is a goddamn Commie." Up till the 80s or so, sure, it worked well enough for this country. But geopolitical and environmental reality has changed, and changed in ways that will cause the end of nations and civilizations if left unheeded, and you are either refusing to see that or actually want to see that. You fell hook line and sinker for the ideas of infinite growth, unlimited resources, and "the free market." In the reality we all live in now, this makes you somewhere between "useful idiot" and "blithering fool."
And I will continue reminding you of these facts wherever and whenever, if for no other reason than that I don't want people who can still be saved throwing away their humanity because of something you said or did. It's nothing personal, any more than a flu shot is a personal vendetta against a given virus. It's just good hygiene.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 07 2019, @03:07AM
Unless, of course, that's not true. That's the problem with asserting things. You can assert false things just as easily as true things. And there are a lot more false things out there.