wonkroom.thinkprogress.org — Executives and other highly compensated employees now receive more than one-third of all pay in the U.S., according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Social Security Administration data — without counting billions of dollars more in pay that remains off federal radar screens that measure wages and salaries.
Jul 24, 2009 View in Crawl 4
chalkboyJul 24, 2009
Do you want laws made against this? Do you want the government to take their money and give it poor people? What do you think a good solution for this is? I can not think of any good reason to take the money from these rich people except for greed and spite. To just take money from people just because you can is not what this country was founded on. What do you expect the insurance companies to do. If a totally government run health care is passed most insurance companies will go out of business. Do you know how many people these companies employ? Do you know how much they have to loose? You may think they are evil but real people are employed by these companies. Do you expect them to go down with out a fight?I do believe that something should be done about the uninsured. I have been unemployed for a long period of time and one time to the hospital can kill you financially. It is not right. But to put all of these other businesses out of business to help a small percentage of people is not right. ONLY the uninsured should be covered. The real problem is the cost of health care. Not the insurance! If healthcare was a reasonable price being uninsured would not be such a big problem. I have no clue how to solve this but this is the problem that needs to be solved for any plan private or public to really work.
booksnmore4youJul 25, 2009
And the author's page @ <a class="user" href="http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/">http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/</a>
orangebobJul 25, 2009
There's no bread, let them eat cakeThere's no end to what they'll takeFlaunt the fruits of noble birthWash the salt into the earthBut they're marching to Bastille DayLa guillotine will claim her bloody prizeFree the dungeons of the innocentThe king will kneel and let his kingdom riseBloodstained velvet, dirty laceNaked fear on every faceSee them bow their heads to dieAs we would bow as they rode byAnd we're marching to Bastille DayLa guillotine will claim her bloody prizeSing, oh choirs of cacophonyThe king has kneeled, to let his kingdom riseLessons taught but never learnedAll around us anger burnsGuide the future by the pastLong ago the mould was castFor they marched up to Bastille DayLa guillotine claimed her bloody prizeHear the echoes of the centuriesPower isn't all that money buys
novenatorJul 25, 2009Submitter
What an articulate s**t sandwich that was. Your assessment of the situation is completely wrong and I can prove it. You assert that a pure market free of any government interference is the best path to wealth equality, yet history proves you wrong. From 1932-1980, direct spending by the US government was relatively high and the gap between the rich and poor decreased. After the conservatives (who often have the same purist rhetoric you do) got into power in 1981 under Reagan, they implemented massive tax and program cuts, and purposefully ran up high deficits in a policy known as 'starve the beast'. The end effect is what we see reviewed in the article, the rich get richer and the gulf between rich and poor increases exponentially.
novenatorJul 25, 2009Submitter
IMO,that guy cloaks things into metaphor to hide the weakness of his own arguments.He asserts that compensation packages move to stock options, golden parachutes, bonuses, etc. when taxes are high, and that this model of increasing CEO pay is forced by government regulation. This is totally wrong. Government regulation needs to close those loopholes. If we have seen anything over the last 30 years, it has been DE-regulation. But the most meaningful factors in the increase in executive pay has been both tax cuts for the rich and an acceptance, sometimes even a praise of greed. Our tax code needs to be *more progressive, not less and regulation needs to be increased to end ways in which the top hide their compensation.
oldgalJul 25, 2009
I suspect that part of what caused the housing bubble to burst was too much money available for investment/lendinding creating too much credit and too little money available for consumption causing too much borrowing. If this had been better balanced we would probably be better off. Thought it might be interesting to research and put the time/allocation graphs together, but so far have been too lazy.