I think the chart on the right could have been found in Russia before their revolution, China before theirs, France before theirs, etc, etc, etc. I keep waiting for one of the GOP to pull a boner and just say "Let them eat cake."
Try putting the charts on a log scale since in their current form they are meaningless. The right chart mostly shows that when you put the bottom of society on welfare and social priograms they have no incentive to do anything other than stay there and beg for more.
The Golden Rule: those with the gold make the rules. What rules do they make? The rules about how to get gold, and the rules about how to keep it and who gets to keep it. Their system is tight!
What is really sad actually, is the tea party folks include a lot of sincere people who care about America. Sadly, they have been duped into thinking that the problem is something other than those who are actually making the rules and pulling the strings. We do need a grass roots movement, with common sense appeal to demonstrate that Fox News is a business...not an information source, that Rush, and Hannity, and Coulter, and Beck...are in it for the money...and that the real problem is the ones controlling the debate to hide and mask the influence of the corporations. Ron Paul is right on a lot of things, and religious right (social conservative) on other things, and his plan is not going to work to change things. Somewhere we need to find someone who can take all the truth from each position, and be charismatic enough, of strong enough moral character, above the ability to corrupt, and run them for president. It would take a true ideologue who was not in it for the money or the power, but in it for America's overall interest, a true public servant...could be a war hero, someone like George Washington...it is still such a shame that Colin Powell became Bush's sacrificial pawn. It is going to take a special person to galvanize enough public support to bring the real carpetbaggers to light...and enough of the public is going to probably go through a lot of suffering to get there...
Exactly! Who put them there? They all volunteers? You trying to tell me that 80% of the population still working is looking to be on welfare? The American dream is being destroyed piece by piece, all so a very few guys can keep gathering all the marbles. To what end?
What eventually brought an end to feudalism? Technology. Information technology will just speed up the cycle. Misinformation technology will create abrupt changes when people realize they have been duped by Fox News, or an equivalency, in which they will trust no form of information, and then I am not sure what happens. Orwell did take a good guess what it might look like though...
You an I both know the democrats put them there with their socalist entitlement programs over the years. The end is to make the vast lower class beholden to the democrats so they will continue to vote for them so the democrats have power. Hence, open borders mean more poor voting for democrats. Geez. Think these things through a bit, Captain. Do I need to tell you about the birds and t he bees, too? :eek:
I think there is something very wrong about those charts, but as usual, the liberals are drawing the wrong conclusions. First, you have to understand that statistics can be misleading. One guy who cashes out in an IPO and makes a zillion bucks can skew such portrayals. I don't begrudge him his money and neither should anyone else. But that's not the real issue. I think it is probable that the chart reflects the astounding increase in CEO compensation over the past 10 or 15 years, an increase that has dwarfed compensation in other industrialized cocuntries. Rather than a failure in social or government economic policy, it reflects a stunning failure of corporate governance. Plenty of business leaders from buffett on down have said the same thing, but CEOs are able to stack their boards with cronies who will backscratch each other. Institutional investors are either too cowardly to confront the CEOs or too conflicted over possible loss of business, so they cast shameful votes in favor of the same management that is ripping them and their fiduciaries off. Now in the last few years we can add the hedge fund princes to the list of over-the-top earners. Is there anything wrong with their compensation? I would argue no. No one is forced to use their services, they are, for the most part, private companies and they are paid for results, unlike their corporate brethren. However, the tax treat of investment manager comp, the"carried interest" sham, is a national disgrace. And guess who supported it? Liberal democrats.
What's behind rising income inequality in the United States? "The United States of Inequality" http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266026