What If the Greedy Rich Paid Their Share? 8 Things to Know About Wealth and Poverty in the US

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/155025/what_if_the_greedy_rich_paid_their_share_8_things_to_know_about_wealth_and_poverty_in_the_us/

America is loaded. We are not a struggling nation ready to go under. We are not facing an enormous debt crisis despite what the politicians and pundits proclaim. We are not the next Greece.

Rather, we have an enormous concentration-of-wealth problem -- one that must be solved for the good of our commonwealth. We are a very rich nation but it doesn’t seem that way because our wealth is so concentrated in the hands of a few. This is America’s disaster.

But wait. Doesn’t the wealth belong to the super-rich? Didn’t they earn it fair and square? Isn’t that the way it’s always been?

Not by a long shot. The amount of wealth that flows to the super-rich is determined by our public policies. It’s all about how we choose to share our nation’s productivity.

[Scuba]

1. It's not that we're broke. It's that all the wealth is concentrated in the constipated.

[Meiko]

2. Soooooo,

What can we do about it? It would take huge changes in tax laws and that ain't gonna happen as long as the government is run by the rich. I mean if you have some suggestions I would be more than happy to listen to them.

[izquierdista]

3. ...not the next Greece...

No, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and the rest of the bankers first have to loot Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Japan. THEN they will be ready to try buying the U.S. for 10 cents on the (leveraged) dollar.

[JayhawkSD]

4. We need a reality check

Look at the chart that accompanies that article. Wages are going up and then they stop going up. That is not a problem of someone else getting rich, it is a problem of the middle class no longer keeping up. And the rich getting richer are not the cause of that, or at least that is not the issue. The issue is that high paying jobs have gone overseas.

The cause is that the world has changed. It's called globalization. People in poor nations are willing to do jobs for less money, and those jobs are competing for our jobs. That drives wages down. Ownership does not have to compete, but labor does. Simply taking some money away from rich people is not going to fix that problem. Taking lots of money away from rich people is not going to fix that problem. Take $100 billion away from Warren Buffet; is that going to make you any more wealthy? Is that going to raise your wages? Is that going to pay any of your bills?

We have enjoyed an awesome standard of living for about five decades now, the envy of most of the world. We have assumed that when the rest of the world could, they would bring their standard of living up to match ours. Not going to happen, because the world does not have enough resources for that to happen. The standard of living is going to become more equal on a worldwide basis, but as it does, as the rest of the world rises, we are going to decline. We have to face the facts of life.

Get as angry as you want at the rich, vent all the anger you want at them, but the problem is not them. The money that you used to get and no longer get did not go to them, it went to some poor smuck in Indonesia, to whom $2 per day is a fortune.

So you want "the rich" who own the jobs to bring them back and pay the wages they used to pay? Fine. That flat screen television you paid $1999 for? It would cost you $5000+ if they did that. That $20,000 car you just bought? Without imported parts, it would go for more than twice that. The food in your grocery store? Two thirds of it would not be there, and the remaining third would cost twice as much.

The world has changed, and rather than complaining and trying to bring the old one back, we should be finding ways to make the new one work better. We could do that if we tried, we're pretty good at stuff like that, really, but we're not even trying.

[izquierdista]

5. YOU need the reality check

All the FOX news apologist drivel you spout does not change the fact that the rich are padding their bank accounts by lowering that awesome standard of living. First they moved jobs to Mexico, and because they still wanted to cut wages they moved the jobs to China, and now they are moving them to Vietnam. Next they will be moving them to Africa.

The problem lies squarely on the rich, and how they game the system to get more for themselves and less for everyone else. Capital, and the rich who seem to think it is theirs alone, shouldn't be free to flit from place to place looking for a more miserable worker to exploit and a new places to pollute. It needs to be regulated, highly so, to produce goods cleanly, and to distribute those goods in a manner different than a Texas Hold'em tournament.

When it's all said and done, the rich need to come up to the awareness of Henry Ford. He knew that by PAYING his workers, his workers could actually afford what they were making. I would have to conclude that in this regard, the rich are not even as smart as yeast. At least when yeast detect that they are poisoning their environment, they will sporulate and go dormant. Or have the Koch Brothers set up a think tank to research ways they can hibernate until they get released into a new environment they can plunder?

[jeff47]

6. If your claim about globalization was true, the rich would also be suffering.

You don't need to be an American to own a company making products in China. In fact, a Chinese CEO will do the same job just as well for less money, just like the factory workers.

But it makes for great spin to try and convince the "regular folk" to leave the rich alone.