5 Ways Massive Inequality Is Paralyzing American Society
The severing of our society into a plutocracy and a peasantry is so far along that statistics almost cease to have meaning. But the facts have to be told, to help explain the sickening sense that we're becoming a nation without a middle class, paralyzed by the inequality deniers and excuse makers who refuse to admit there's something wrong with their free-market capitalist system. The extremes are becoming almost intolerable.
[First, we must comment on the rhetoric of the progressive socialist democrats; where anyone who does not agree with their deeply flawed or erroneous assumptions and conclusions is labeled a “denier” – a pejorative that originated with the term “holocaust denier.” Then there are the attacks on our capitalist political system that provides equality of opportunity as opposed to the socialist/communist ideal of equality of outcome as guaranteed by a strong, some say totalitarian, centrally-planned government. And, what would a progressive socialist democrat diatribe be without claiming any position other than their own is “extreme?”]
1. A Broken System of Compensation: The Combined Salaries of 350,000 Pre-School Teachers is Less Than That of Five Hedge Fund Managers
Pre-school teaching may be our nation's most important job. Numerous studies show that with pre-school, all children achieve more and earn more through adulthood, with the most disadvantaged benefiting the most. Hedge fund managers, at the other extreme, are likely to bet on mortgages to fail or on food prices to rise.It's a frightening commentary on our value system that the total income of over a third of a million pre-school teachers is less than the combined income of just five big-money speculators.
[Reality is hard to understand if you are a progressive socialist democrat.
First, Pre-school is not our nation’s most important job. Teachers, in general, are doing a poor job of educating our children, turning out decades of functional illiterate that can’t seem to compete with the person across town, let alone in a global economy.
Second, there is no statistically valid proof that show that any pre-school advantages dissipate after the second grade and do not correlate well to future success as a student or as a citizen.
Does Prekindergarten Improve School Preparation and Performance?
Using a new rich source of data, researchers Katherine Magnuson, Christopher Ruhm, and Jane Waldfogel conclude in Does Prekindergarten Improve School Preparation and Performance? (NBER Working Paper No. 10452) that early education does increase reading and mathematics skills at school entry, but it also boosts children's classroom behavioral problems and reduces their self-control. Further, for most children the positive effects of pre-kindergarten on skills largely dissipate by the spring of first grade, although the negative behavioral effects continue. In the study, the authors take account of many factors affecting a child, including family background and neighborhood characteristics. These factors include race/ethnicity, age, health status at birth, height, weight, and gender, family income related to need, language spoken in the home, and so on. Source: Does Prekindergarten Improve School Preparation and Performance?
Third, there is little or no correlation between the pay of teachers and the results they are producing. Why teachers should receive a life-long pass to insulate them from economic realities that are found in the private sector when they perform so poorly is a result of the progressive unions who introduce corruption into the political process and continue to poison our children’s minds against American exceptionalism and capitalism. To compare the pay of teachers to hedge fund managers is intellectually dishonest in many respects; the least of which of is the progressive socialist democrats use of “class envy” to drive their entitlement agenda that trades votes for government handouts.
And, Fourth, pre-school is actually being promoted by the unions to enlarge their declining membership in the private sector and is being sold to the progressive victimhood as free government-subsidized daycare for working mothers and fathers]
2. Diminishing Support for Society: The 1% Made More from their Investments in 2013 than the Entire Cost of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Safety Net
America's wealth grew by almost $9 trillion in 2013. The richest 1% own 34 percent of the wealth, or about $3 trillion of the 2013 gain. That is far more than the budget for Social Security ($860 billion), Medicare ($524 billion), Medicaid ($304 billion), and the entire safety net ($286 billion for SNAP, WIC [Women, Infants, Children], Child Nutrition, Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Housing).
[Again, the progressive socialists democrats are promoting class envy and suggesting that the working class have a right to the wealth of those who have inherited or earned their wealth. In essence promoting the socialist/communist denial of private property rights and that all productive assets should be owned by the people and managed by the enlightened elite using central planning by the government and enforced by a totalitarian regime to insure “fairness.” All the while overlooking the demonstrable fact that the enlightened ruling elite and their special interest friends are unbelievably corrupt and living high on the hog. If you do not believe that a 1% exists in a socialist/communist society, just check out the massive wealth of the political leaders.]
3. Capital's Long-Term Dominance of Labor: Since 1900, a Dollar of Labor has Grown to $127, a Dollar of Stocks to $1,247
There's a good reason why the super-rich are cleaning up in the stock market. Thomas Piketty explains that, barring war or depression, the return on capital far outpaces economic growth, causing average workers without a stock portfolio to drop further and further behind. A look at stock market growth over 114 years confirms that a dollar of capital is now worth ten times more than a dollar of labor value. In recent years, the gains from continued worker productivity have gone to the 10% of Americans who own almost 90 percent of all stocks excluding pensions (which are fast disappearing).
[It should be noted that Thomas Piketty is a French socialist economist whose book on inequality appears to be riddled with errors and other issues.
Piketty findings undercut by errors
Thomas Piketty’s book, ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’, has been the publishing sensation of the year. Its thesis of rising inequality tapped into the zeitgeist and electrified the post-financial crisis public policy debate.
Some issues concern sourcing and definitional problems. Some numbers appear simply to be constructed out of thin air. But according to a Financial Times investigation, the rock-star French economist appears to have got his sums wrong.
The data underpinning Professor Piketty’s 577-page tome, which has dominated best-seller lists in recent weeks, contain a series of errors that skew his findings. The FT found mistakes and unexplained entries in his spreadsheets, similar to those that last year undermined the work on public debt and growth of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. Source: Piketty findings undercut by errors - FT.com
What the progressive socialist democrats do not seem to mention is that progressive socialist unions are undermining our economy and society with their political corruption and cronyism. It appears that these progressive unions reward seniority over merit, the status quo over innovation, the use of work rules that demand single tasks be performed by multiple union people, and worst of all, demand continuing hikes in salaries, benefits, and pensions without any corresponding increase in productivity to pay for the increases. The pricing of union labor has done more to drive outsourcing than any other single factor in America other than rising taxes, and increasingly ideologically-motivated administrative and directed rules and regulations. And, truth-be-told, these very same unions place their money in the stock market and bet against the very companies that they are plundering. So spare me the socialist/communist class rhetoric that does nothing by create chaos and lead to political revolutions.]
4. The Walmartization of America: A Few Super-Rich at the Top, then Everyone Else
Just like at Walmart, a few big moneymakers are ruling over a great majority of increasingly low-income workers. Low-wage jobs ($7.69 to $13.83 per hour) made up 1/5 of the jobs lost to the recession, but accounted for nearly 3/5 of the jobs regained during the recovery. And it's getting worse. Nine out of ten of the fastest-growing occupations are considered low-wage, generally not requiring a college degree.
The descent into Walmart-like employment is disproportionately hurting minorities. In 2013, an astonishing 55.9 percent of employed black recent college graduates were underemployed, working in an occupation that typically does not require a four-year college degree. At the other end of the Walmartization, families in the top 5% made anywhere from $300,000 to $40 million -- in just one year.
[The problem with Walmart is that they refuse to give up to the progressive socialist democrat unions as that would reduce their operational effectiveness and drastically increase prices with no offsets – the costs to be carried on the backs of consumers – with especially heavy impacts on the poor and middle class. As for minorities, it should be noted that the progressive socialist democrats have continued to keep minorities as a permanent underclass in order to perpetuate their political power. When these minorities succeed, especially those who are immigrants, they regard progressive wealth distribution and increased taxation as confiscatory and tend to leave the progressive socialist democrat party. How many times have we seen minority activists protest against the big box stores on behalf of their masters – the progressive socialist democrat trade unions? Disadvantaging their community and providing additional tax revenue and jobs in the next community where the big box store locates.
Yes, the Waltons are wealthy – the found a need and filled it. It is the American way. Now the progressive socialist democrats come along and claim that they are not paying their “fair share” which is calculated to be the amount of money to return them to the middle class.]
5. Toward Third-World Status: Our Shrinking Middle Class Gets a Smaller Cut of National Wealth than Anywhere except China and India
From a global perspective, we're becoming the type of country that we used to dismiss as "third-world." Among developed and fast-rising nations only the middle classes of China and India get a smaller cut of their country's wealth than in the United States. Both of them are rapidly catching up to us.
[What? Shrinking our economy, disarming our military, reducing our population and standard of living is the goal of the progressive socialist democrats. Where have you been? This is the mantra of all of the progressive socialist/communist environmentalists who tell us we must downsize to save the planet. We must curb our pollution – even as Russia, China, and India up the number of coal-fired energy generating plants. This is pure madness designed to defeat the United States from within and ensure we become another unexceptional member state of the international community that is dominated by socialists, communists, and Islamicists.]
Antidote
Thomas Piketty recommends a global wealth tax to help reverse inequality. But a financial transaction tax (also called speculation tax or Robin Hood tax) would be easier to implement, more efficiently regulated, and a source of massive revenues at little cost to financial traders. Whatever method we choose, progressive thinkers in the U.S. and around the world will need to unite on a single cause, much as the Tea Party did in its crusade against government. We can't afford to disagree among ourselves as paralysis sets in.
[Piketty is a freaking socialist – the man who supports spending the public taxpayer’s money until it is all gone and there is yet another revolution to recapture natural resources, property, and redistribute wealth once again. There is but one antidote for what is occurring in America; reducing political corruption and cronyism – starting with the elimination of progressive socialist democrats and their progressive trade unions.]
Source (in context and with reference footnotes): 5 Ways Massive Inequality Is Paralyzing American Society
