SPLIT TOPIC: American society: the poor the unemployed

http://www.demos.org/event_list.cfm?currenteventid=BF940062-3FF4-6C82-5CE0DADAEBFFC2D6

"After the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath a great political divide emerged among many Americans reexamining the direction of our country. One side says that unleashed free-market policies led to the worst downturn since the Great Depression, and calls for effective government to foster more equitable prosperity. The other side says that government has grown too big and too intrusive, and calls for the country to rediscover the virtues of limited government and free-market capitalism."

Cool - good look.

I anxiously await someone explaining how the financial crisis should result in FEWER regulations.

Oh wait, said person might be an acolyte of the great socialist, Ayn Rand.

Hmmm

Ayn Rand went off on public assistance people with a venegence and was on it.

The debate is free, and I've registered.

It should be interesting to hear the perspective of the NY chapter of Ayn Rand.

...in many ways, I like the guy for agreeing to show up. Demos isn't exactly known for being a welcoming place for those on the right.

Very interesting. Looks like something we can all get behind.

a pretty balanced article on the impediments to implementing "living wage" in NYC

http://www.citylimits.org/news/articles/4285/living-wage-law-the-next-council-battleground

public assistance may get tougher on its recipients

http://www.citylimits.org/news/articles/4281/cuomo-s-cuts-could-hit-the-poor

The consumer is also free to shop at the big box store, mom & pop, bodega or Wal-Mart dependent upon their finances and needs.

whynot_31 said:

http://www.demos.org/event_list.cfm?currenteventid=BF940062-3FF4-6C82-5CE0DADAEBFFC2D6

"After the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath a great political divide emerged among many Americans reexamining the direction of our country. One side says that unleashed free-market policies led to the worst downturn since the Great Depression, and calls for effective government to foster more equitable prosperity. The other side says that government has grown too big and too intrusive, and calls for the country to rediscover the virtues of limited government and free-market capitalism."

The event was hosted tonight (March 10) at NYU and moderated by WNYC.

Needless to say, consensus was not reached by the end of the evening.

Perhaps folks are disturbed by the fact that:

The top-earning 5 percent of taxpayers (Adjusted Gross Income over $159,619), paid far more than the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers. While the top 5 percent earned 34.7 percent of the nation's adjusted gross income, they paid approximately 58.7 percent of federal individual income taxes.

The fact comes from the 5th paragraph of this article, I merely paraphrased it so it could stand alone: http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html]

So, are the are the wealthy "overtaxed"?

Is a progressive tax structure inherently unjust to the rich?

Um, are famous sports stars "exploited" because they are not paid the same amount of revenue that they bring into their sports league? ...could they take themselves elsewhere if they wanted more money?

Are the wealth in the same situation? I.E. Is someone who brings in $10 million to his employer, yet is only paid a mere $5 million someone worthy of our sympathy? Are they "exploited"?

When someone becomes very successful, is society entitled to a larger percentage of their salary? Are we exploiting them?

CTK, could you please provide one more statistic? You say that the top 1% in income pay 20% of total taxes paid. What percentage of total income received goes to that same 1% ?

Obviously, if the top 1% receives 40% or 50% of all income, but pays only 20% of all taxes, that would be very different than if that 1% receives 10% of all income but pays 20% of all taxes. It would strongly suggest that that fortunate 1% of our population is grossly undertaxed.

These are helpful statistics, but what they don't factor in is exactly how many of the top percentage earners are paying taxes at all. Through tax shelters (foundations, self-incorporated entites, etc.) there are going to be a whole swath of the top 1-2% that largely avoid paying taxes, a practice that went into overdrive when further relaxed tax laws were passed in the latter years of the last Bush presidency.

Much like my rant about the fact that only 14% of corporations operating on US soil have actually payed corporate taxes from 2005 on in another thread around here, this is a serioius, systematic problem that is the direct result of relaxing federal regulations far too much in the last few decades.

In light of that, of course those top 1-2% earners are paying more than their fair share of taxes at the moment, when so many of their colleagues have shirked their responsibilies and left them high and dry. But the solution is not to then tax lower and middle-income individuals to pick up the slack, is it?

So, we need to re-instate some lax regulations and certainly re-write tax laws to protect the federal budget against most tax shelters. And I'm even a registered conservative! Well, fiscally anyway. I believe that the less the federal gov't is involved, the better. But there is a limit to the amount of regulation that shouldn't be in place, and that line was sadly crossed long ago. Laissez-faire Capitalism is a failure, because the "invisible hand" whynot references in the new Fishers Market (Crown Heights) thread only works if the Almighty Market has the self-discipline and moral code required to regulate itself. Something it has proven time and again unable to do, on any level. Insatiable greed always wins.

Thought you all would find this interesting:

Trade Unions and the Big Apple

Let me leave you with some numbers. In the early 1950's when 35% of the American work force was unionized, the United States had the smallest wealth gap (between the top and bottom 20 percent of its population) of any advanced nation in the world. Now, when 11.9% of our workforce is unionized, we have the largest.

If we can't figure out a way to adapt, the whole country is going to have to take a pay cut.

....there will be less money to be made from the US market, and only those who are able to make money from reasonably priced goods and labor from overseas will prosper.

If such a decline occurs, I hope it continues to be gradual. Many argue that we have been living off debt and trade imbalances since the mid 1970s.