Obama wants to take the money from hard working prosperous Republicans and give it to many lazy people. This not be fair or good in my opinion. He should make those lazy people work or they should be tossed in jail and put on a diet of bread and water.
:cripwalk::cripwalk::cripwalk
<)<(<)<(<)<:drink:
:cripwalk::cripwalk::cripwalk
<)<(<)<(<)<:drink:Perfect picture of 100% of the clowns on this forum crying that obama is spending their tax money...Broke jokes voting like their rich and kissing Rush limpdicks ass thinking that the man is concerned about their well being vs his own millions..
It is really telling how stupid alot of people really are.
And what's sad is the Democratic Party who is perceived as evil among these church goers is in reality the party who is following the chrisitan doctrine closer than the Republicants by doing the important work and showing compassion for the poor and forgotten in this country.
I meant and started up a conversation with an older man today at the gym. He was doing nothing but bitching about Obama and his stimulus plan and how it's going to take a chunck out of his 250 thousand dollar salary that he earns. About all I could say to him was "I wish I had your problem with that 250 grand". Turned out after talking to him for a while that he actully lived on the corner just a couple houses down from where I lived. This old man had lived there 27 years, and not once had he made an attempt to meet anybody around him. Not one of my neighbors told me they knew him or have met him. He said he didn't even know his next door neighbor, much less me. But I guarantee you that if he hadn't told me his party affiliation, I could have easily guessed what it was. Somebody who makes no attempt to meet the preceived little people, and could care less or doesn't observe what goes on around him sounds very republican to me. And this isn't the first time I've run into Republ like this. I can usually smell them a mile away in a room full of people. It's a me me me the world revolves around me attitiude. And oh yeah, they like to talk about their money.....Yawn
We already spend more on education than anyone else...spending more is going to make a difference? That doesnt make us more committed it makes us wasteful
the idea of spending more to achieve better results/value...wihtout chnging anything else is economic suicide.
since Obamam gained power his plan was to spend more...with transparacy......whatever
and that isnt an empity suit?
where is the beef?
the idea of spending more to achieve better results/value...wihtout chnging anything else is economic suicide.
since Obamam gained power his plan was to spend more...with transparacy......whatever
and that isnt an empity suit?
where is the beef?
hehehe
"when we were winning"? as in we gave lot, but now we have to give a lot more
.
brilliance
We have "two Americas"
You poor poor pitiful victims, poor poor pitiful you. You have obstacles to overcome that generations of people before you and millions of people today had to overcome, but we taught you to believe an elected official in DC is your answer, so you have no chance to overcome them. because you can't without me.
God, I would be ashamed to make that argument. Have some pride loonies, will ya.
"when we were winning"? as in we gave lot, but now we have to give a lot more
.brilliance
We have "two Americas"
You poor poor pitiful victims, poor poor pitiful you. You have obstacles to overcome that generations of people before you and millions of people today had to overcome, but we taught you to believe an elected official in DC is your answer, so you have no chance to overcome them. because you can't without me.
God, I would be ashamed to make that argument. Have some pride loonies, will ya.
I believe Obama did an OK job of procuring the ignorant, poor, uneducated vote this time around. Check how the inner city voted and then check the high school graduation rate of these same areas where he absolutely dominated. Check the % of these folks who are on the government teet. Why do poor people continually vote in democrats on the state, local, natl. level? Where has it gotten them? Still poor, still on the govt. teet from cradle to grave, an illegitimate birth rate that way exceeds their high school graduation rate...etc
The last 28 years have been good to the top 1% and bad for the bottom 80% and dont give me that tired old shit that its the bottom 80% fault.
Income and Power
The income distribution also can be used as a power indicator. As Table 6 shows, it is not as concentrated as the wealth distribution, but the top 1% of income earners did receive 20% of all income in the year 2000. That's up from 12.8% for the top 1% in 1982, which is quite a jump, and it parallels what is happening with the wealth distribution. This is further support for the inference that the power of the corporate community and the upper class have been increasing in recent decades.
Table 6: Distribution of income in the United States, 1982-2000
Income
Top 1 percent Next 19 percent Bottom 80 percent
1982 12.8% 39.1% 48.1%
1988 16.6% 38.9% 44.5%
1991 15.7% 40.7% 43.7%
1994 14.4% 40.8% 44.9%
1997 16.6% 39.6% 43.8%
2000 20.0% 38.7% 41.4%
From Wolff (2004).
The most recent findings on income inequality come from the New York Times' analysis of a November, 2006, Internal Revenue Service report on income in 2004. Although overall income has grown by 27% since 1979, 33% of the gains went to the top 1%. Meanwhile, the bottom 60% were making less: about 95 cents for each dollar they made in 1979. The next 20% - those between the 60th and 80th rungs of the income ladder -- made $1.02 for each dollar they earned in 1979. Furthermore, the Times author concludes that only the top 5% made significant gains ($1.53 for each 1979 dollar). Most amazing of all, the top 0.1% -- that's one-tenth of one percent -- had more combined pre-tax income than the poorest 120 million people (Johnston, 2006).
A key factor behind the high concentration of income, and the likely reason that the concentration has been increasing, can be seen by examining the distribution of what is called "capital income": income from capital gains, dividends, interest, and rents. In 2003, just 1% of all households -- those with after-tax incomes averaging $701,500 -- received 57.5% of all capital income, up from 40% in the early 1990s. On the other hand, the bottom 80% received only 12.6% of capital income, down by nearly half since 1983, when the bottom 80% received 23.5%. Figure 5 and Table 7 provide the details.
Figure 5: Share of capital income earned by top 1% and bottom 80%, 1979-2003 (From Shapiro & Friedman, 2006.)
Table 7: Share of capital income flowing to households in various income categories
Top 1% Top 5% Top 10% Bottom 80%
1979 37.8% 57.9% 66.7% 23.1%
1981 35.8% 55.4% 64.6% 24.4%
1983 37.6% 55.2% 63.7% 25.1%
1985 39.7% 56.9% 64.9% 24.9%
1987 36.7% 55.3% 64.0% 25.6%
1989 39.1% 57.4% 66.0% 23.5%
1991 38.3% 56.2% 64.7% 23.9%
1993 42.2% 60.5% 69.2% 20.7%
1995 43.2% 61.5% 70.1% 19.6%
1997 45.7% 64.1% 72.6% 17.5%
1999 47.8% 65.7% 73.8% 17.0%
2001 51.8% 67.8% 74.8% 16.0%
2003 57.5% 73.2% 79.4% 12.6%
Adapted from Shapiro & Friedman (2006).
Another way that income can be used as a power indicator is by comparing average CEO annual pay to average factory worker pay, something that Business Week has been doing for many years now. The ratio of CEO pay to factory worker pay rose from 42:1 in 1960 to as high as 531:1 in 2000, at the height of the stock market bubble, when CEOs were cashing in big stock options;. It was at 411:1 in 2005. By way of comparison, the same ratio is about 25:1 in Europe. The changes in the American ratio are displayed in Figure 6.
Figure 6: CEOs' pay as a multiple of the average worker's pay
It's even more revealing to compare the actual rates of increase of the salaries of CEOs and ordinary workers; from 1990 to 2005, CEOs' pay increased almost 300% (adjusted for inflation), while production workers gained a scant 4.3%. The purchasing power of the federal minimum wage actually declined by 9.3%, when inflation is taken into account. These startling results are illustrated in Figure 7.
Figure 7: CEOs' average pay, production workers' average pay, the S&P 500 Index, corporate profits, and the federal minimum wage, 1990-2005 (all figures adjusted for inflation)
Source: Executive Excess 2006, the 13th Annual CEO Compensation Survey from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.
If you wonder how such a large gap could develop, the proximate, or most immediate, factor involves the way in which CEOs now are able to rig things so that the board of directors, which they help select -- and which includes some fellow CEOs on whose boards they sit -- gives them the pay they want. The trick is in hiring outside experts, called "compensation consultants," who give the process a thin veneer of economic respectability.
The process has been explained in detail by a retired CEO of DuPont, Edgar S. Woolard, Jr., who is now chair of the New York Stock Exchange's executive compensation committee. His experience suggests that he knows whereof he speaks, and he speaks because he's concerned that corporate leaders are losing respect in the public mind. He says that the business page chatter about CEO salaries being set by the competition for their services in the executive labor market is "bull." As to the claim that CEOs deserve ever higher salaries because they "create wealth," he describes that rationale as a "joke," says the New York Times (Morgenson, 2005, Section 3, p. 1).
Here's how it works, according to Woolard:
The compensation committee [of the board of directors] talks to an outside consultant who has surveys you could drive a truck through and pay anything you want to pay, to be perfectly honest. The outside consultant talks to the human resources vice president, who talks to the CEO. The CEO says what he'd like to receive. It gets to the human resources person who tells the outside consultant. And it pretty well works out that the CEO gets what he's implied he thinks he deserves, so he will be respected by his peers. (Morgenson, 2005.)
The board of directors buys into what the CEO asks for because the outside consultant is an "expert" on such matters. Furthermore, handing out only modest salary increases might give the wrong impression about how highly the board values the CEO. And if someone on the board should object, there are the three or four CEOs from other companies who will make sure it happens. It is a process with a built-in escalator.
As for why the consultants go along with this scam, they know which side their bread is buttered on. They realize the CEO has a big say-so on whether or not they are hired again. So they suggest a package of salaries, stock options and other goodies that they think will please the CEO, and they, too, get rich in the process. And certainly the top executives just below the CEO don't mind hearing about the boss's raise. They know it will mean pay increases for them, too. (For an excellent detailed article on the main consulting firm that helps CEOs and other corporate executives raise their pay, check out the New York Times article entitled "America's Corporate Pay Pal", which supports everything Woolard of DuPont claims and adds new information.)
There's a much deeper power story that underlies the self-dealing and mutual back-scratching by CEOs now carried out through interlocking directorates and seemingly independent outside consultants. It probably involves several factors. At the least, on the worker side, it reflects an increasing lack of power following the all-out attack on unions in the 1960s and 1970s, which is explained in detail by the best expert on recent American labor history, James Gross (1995), a labor and industrial relations professor at Cornell. That decline in union power made possible and was increased by both outsourcing at home and the movement of production to developing countries, which were facilitated by the break-up of the New Deal coalition and the rise of the New Right (Domhoff, 1990, Chapter 10). It signals the shift of the United States from a high-wage to a low-wage economy, with professionals protected by the fact that foreign-trained doctors and lawyers aren't allowed to compete with their American counterparts in the direct way that low-wage foreign-born workers are.
On the other side of the class divide, the rise in CEO pay may reflect the increasing power of chief executives as compared to major owners and stockholders in general, not just their increasing power over workers. CEOs may now be the center of gravity in the corporate community and the power elite, displacing the leaders in wealthy owning families (e.g., the second and third generations of the Walton family, the owners of Wal-Mart). True enough, the CEOs are sometimes ousted by their generally go-along boards of directors, but they are able to make hay and throw their weight around during the time they are king of the mountain. (It's really not much different than that old children's game, except it's played out in profit-oriented bureaucratic hierarchies, with no other sector of society, like government, willing or able to restrain the winners.)
The claims made in the previous paragraph need much further investigation. But they demonstrate the ideas and research directions that are suggested by looking at the wealth and income distributions as indicators of power.
Income and Power
The income distribution also can be used as a power indicator. As Table 6 shows, it is not as concentrated as the wealth distribution, but the top 1% of income earners did receive 20% of all income in the year 2000. That's up from 12.8% for the top 1% in 1982, which is quite a jump, and it parallels what is happening with the wealth distribution. This is further support for the inference that the power of the corporate community and the upper class have been increasing in recent decades.
Table 6: Distribution of income in the United States, 1982-2000
Income
Top 1 percent Next 19 percent Bottom 80 percent
1982 12.8% 39.1% 48.1%
1988 16.6% 38.9% 44.5%
1991 15.7% 40.7% 43.7%
1994 14.4% 40.8% 44.9%
1997 16.6% 39.6% 43.8%
2000 20.0% 38.7% 41.4%
From Wolff (2004).
The most recent findings on income inequality come from the New York Times' analysis of a November, 2006, Internal Revenue Service report on income in 2004. Although overall income has grown by 27% since 1979, 33% of the gains went to the top 1%. Meanwhile, the bottom 60% were making less: about 95 cents for each dollar they made in 1979. The next 20% - those between the 60th and 80th rungs of the income ladder -- made $1.02 for each dollar they earned in 1979. Furthermore, the Times author concludes that only the top 5% made significant gains ($1.53 for each 1979 dollar). Most amazing of all, the top 0.1% -- that's one-tenth of one percent -- had more combined pre-tax income than the poorest 120 million people (Johnston, 2006).
A key factor behind the high concentration of income, and the likely reason that the concentration has been increasing, can be seen by examining the distribution of what is called "capital income": income from capital gains, dividends, interest, and rents. In 2003, just 1% of all households -- those with after-tax incomes averaging $701,500 -- received 57.5% of all capital income, up from 40% in the early 1990s. On the other hand, the bottom 80% received only 12.6% of capital income, down by nearly half since 1983, when the bottom 80% received 23.5%. Figure 5 and Table 7 provide the details.
Figure 5: Share of capital income earned by top 1% and bottom 80%, 1979-2003 (From Shapiro & Friedman, 2006.)
Table 7: Share of capital income flowing to households in various income categories
Top 1% Top 5% Top 10% Bottom 80%
1979 37.8% 57.9% 66.7% 23.1%
1981 35.8% 55.4% 64.6% 24.4%
1983 37.6% 55.2% 63.7% 25.1%
1985 39.7% 56.9% 64.9% 24.9%
1987 36.7% 55.3% 64.0% 25.6%
1989 39.1% 57.4% 66.0% 23.5%
1991 38.3% 56.2% 64.7% 23.9%
1993 42.2% 60.5% 69.2% 20.7%
1995 43.2% 61.5% 70.1% 19.6%
1997 45.7% 64.1% 72.6% 17.5%
1999 47.8% 65.7% 73.8% 17.0%
2001 51.8% 67.8% 74.8% 16.0%
2003 57.5% 73.2% 79.4% 12.6%
Adapted from Shapiro & Friedman (2006).
Another way that income can be used as a power indicator is by comparing average CEO annual pay to average factory worker pay, something that Business Week has been doing for many years now. The ratio of CEO pay to factory worker pay rose from 42:1 in 1960 to as high as 531:1 in 2000, at the height of the stock market bubble, when CEOs were cashing in big stock options;. It was at 411:1 in 2005. By way of comparison, the same ratio is about 25:1 in Europe. The changes in the American ratio are displayed in Figure 6.
Figure 6: CEOs' pay as a multiple of the average worker's pay
It's even more revealing to compare the actual rates of increase of the salaries of CEOs and ordinary workers; from 1990 to 2005, CEOs' pay increased almost 300% (adjusted for inflation), while production workers gained a scant 4.3%. The purchasing power of the federal minimum wage actually declined by 9.3%, when inflation is taken into account. These startling results are illustrated in Figure 7.
Figure 7: CEOs' average pay, production workers' average pay, the S&P 500 Index, corporate profits, and the federal minimum wage, 1990-2005 (all figures adjusted for inflation)
Source: Executive Excess 2006, the 13th Annual CEO Compensation Survey from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.
If you wonder how such a large gap could develop, the proximate, or most immediate, factor involves the way in which CEOs now are able to rig things so that the board of directors, which they help select -- and which includes some fellow CEOs on whose boards they sit -- gives them the pay they want. The trick is in hiring outside experts, called "compensation consultants," who give the process a thin veneer of economic respectability.
The process has been explained in detail by a retired CEO of DuPont, Edgar S. Woolard, Jr., who is now chair of the New York Stock Exchange's executive compensation committee. His experience suggests that he knows whereof he speaks, and he speaks because he's concerned that corporate leaders are losing respect in the public mind. He says that the business page chatter about CEO salaries being set by the competition for their services in the executive labor market is "bull." As to the claim that CEOs deserve ever higher salaries because they "create wealth," he describes that rationale as a "joke," says the New York Times (Morgenson, 2005, Section 3, p. 1).
Here's how it works, according to Woolard:
The compensation committee [of the board of directors] talks to an outside consultant who has surveys you could drive a truck through and pay anything you want to pay, to be perfectly honest. The outside consultant talks to the human resources vice president, who talks to the CEO. The CEO says what he'd like to receive. It gets to the human resources person who tells the outside consultant. And it pretty well works out that the CEO gets what he's implied he thinks he deserves, so he will be respected by his peers. (Morgenson, 2005.)
The board of directors buys into what the CEO asks for because the outside consultant is an "expert" on such matters. Furthermore, handing out only modest salary increases might give the wrong impression about how highly the board values the CEO. And if someone on the board should object, there are the three or four CEOs from other companies who will make sure it happens. It is a process with a built-in escalator.
As for why the consultants go along with this scam, they know which side their bread is buttered on. They realize the CEO has a big say-so on whether or not they are hired again. So they suggest a package of salaries, stock options and other goodies that they think will please the CEO, and they, too, get rich in the process. And certainly the top executives just below the CEO don't mind hearing about the boss's raise. They know it will mean pay increases for them, too. (For an excellent detailed article on the main consulting firm that helps CEOs and other corporate executives raise their pay, check out the New York Times article entitled "America's Corporate Pay Pal", which supports everything Woolard of DuPont claims and adds new information.)
There's a much deeper power story that underlies the self-dealing and mutual back-scratching by CEOs now carried out through interlocking directorates and seemingly independent outside consultants. It probably involves several factors. At the least, on the worker side, it reflects an increasing lack of power following the all-out attack on unions in the 1960s and 1970s, which is explained in detail by the best expert on recent American labor history, James Gross (1995), a labor and industrial relations professor at Cornell. That decline in union power made possible and was increased by both outsourcing at home and the movement of production to developing countries, which were facilitated by the break-up of the New Deal coalition and the rise of the New Right (Domhoff, 1990, Chapter 10). It signals the shift of the United States from a high-wage to a low-wage economy, with professionals protected by the fact that foreign-trained doctors and lawyers aren't allowed to compete with their American counterparts in the direct way that low-wage foreign-born workers are.
On the other side of the class divide, the rise in CEO pay may reflect the increasing power of chief executives as compared to major owners and stockholders in general, not just their increasing power over workers. CEOs may now be the center of gravity in the corporate community and the power elite, displacing the leaders in wealthy owning families (e.g., the second and third generations of the Walton family, the owners of Wal-Mart). True enough, the CEOs are sometimes ousted by their generally go-along boards of directors, but they are able to make hay and throw their weight around during the time they are king of the mountain. (It's really not much different than that old children's game, except it's played out in profit-oriented bureaucratic hierarchies, with no other sector of society, like government, willing or able to restrain the winners.)
The claims made in the previous paragraph need much further investigation. But they demonstrate the ideas and research directions that are suggested by looking at the wealth and income distributions as indicators of power.
Willie, your right. We do have two Americas. But most of the republicans who are above the fray think that the generations before us were strong and overcame poverty, when in fact they didn't. And they were poor victims who probably lived very shitty lives. I've seen it first hand here in my city shelter for many years. And it will continue that way until somebody acknowleges that we have a problem. This is the main difference between repubs and dems. The dems know and believe they can help the less fortunate. The repubs don't and won't even try. Why this party disguises themselves as Christian is beyond me.hehehe
"when we were winning"? as in we gave lot, but now we have to give a lot more
brilliance
We have "two Americas"
You poor poor pitiful victims, poor poor pitiful you. You have obstacles to overcome that generations of people before you and millions of people today had to overcome, but we taught you to believe an elected official in DC is your answer, so you have no chance to overcome them. because you can't without me.
God, I would be ashamed to make that argument. Have some pride loonies, will ya.
great point, too bad the facts don't support anything you say.
People migrated to this country poor, they worked their way into the middle class. No demographic had a bigger handicap to overcome than Vietnamese refugees, yet they worked their way into the being the highest income demographic.
There is a difference between you and I. I believe you have the right to pursue happiness, and an opportunity to create a better life for yourself. You believe some career politician in Washington will do that for you.
Okie Dokie, I'm proud to be different.
Willie, not everybody worked their way into middle class. Not everybody could find work. Not everybody has good fortune. Not everybody kept their health. Not everybody is as smart as the people who "make it". The difference with Repubs is they think everybody is the same, and have the same opportunities. Which is bullshit. There ARE people who fall between the cracks. Those are the people that the dems try to help. And those are the same people that repubs consider collateral damage. :>(
GoSooner, I'm a proponent of a safety net, and for helping those who can't help themselves.
I'm not a proponent of supporting a welfare career, I'm not a proponent of wealth redistribution, I can't possibly support a system that is laced with all the wrong incentives for the poor, I cannot support a system that encourages welfare moms to have babies and stay single, I cannot support a system that takes school choice away from the very people it's supposed to be helping.
We don't have a different view on wanting to help people, that's just liberal talking points poppycock, we have a different view on how to best help them.
Simple fact, the states with the most generous welfare programs have the most people living in poverty. Why do you think that is?
I'm not a proponent of supporting a welfare career, I'm not a proponent of wealth redistribution, I can't possibly support a system that is laced with all the wrong incentives for the poor, I cannot support a system that encourages welfare moms to have babies and stay single, I cannot support a system that takes school choice away from the very people it's supposed to be helping.
We don't have a different view on wanting to help people, that's just liberal talking points poppycock, we have a different view on how to best help them.
Simple fact, the states with the most generous welfare programs have the most people living in poverty. Why do you think that is?
Willie, I agree that the system needs to be cleaned up. I don't like free rides any more than the republicans do. And I don't like wasteful spending, which both parties are guilty of. But the biggest myth in this country is that this is the land of equal opportunity. There are still many people out there that really do need our help. And because 1% of the people control 80% of the money, and aren't about to relinquish any, the problem has only gotten worse. Absolutely the worst thing we can do is what the Bush Administration has done for the last 8 years...Which is nothing.
Willie the vietnamese are a success story but it is not exactly a rags to riches success story.
The ones that the govt brought here at the wars end were the upper class, govt officials and ranking army officers. They were young healthy smart and some were wealthy.
Not exactly a cross section of society.
The ones that the govt brought here at the wars end were the upper class, govt officials and ranking army officers. They were young healthy smart and some were wealthy.
Not exactly a cross section of society.
Both parties want to help the poor. Dems want to force you to give to the govt and the govt gets to decide how its spent. Republicans want to give directly to the charity. So please stop with the talking points.
-- Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).
-- Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.
-- Residents of the states that voted for John Kerry in 2004 gave smaller percentages of their incomes to charity than did residents of states that voted for George Bush.
-- Bush carried 24 of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average.
-- In the 10 reddest states, in which Bush got more than 60 percent majorities, the average percentage of personal income donated to charity was 3.5. Residents of the bluest states, which gave Bush less than 40 percent, donated just 1.9 percent.
-- People who reject the idea that "government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality" give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition
-- Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).
-- Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.
-- Residents of the states that voted for John Kerry in 2004 gave smaller percentages of their incomes to charity than did residents of states that voted for George Bush.
-- Bush carried 24 of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average.
-- In the 10 reddest states, in which Bush got more than 60 percent majorities, the average percentage of personal income donated to charity was 3.5. Residents of the bluest states, which gave Bush less than 40 percent, donated just 1.9 percent.
-- People who reject the idea that "government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality" give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition
