US wealth gap among world's highest

[Breukelen advocaat]

"It is clear that social tension comes from inequality. The trickle down theory [that wealth starts with the rich] has not delivered. Inequality is not good for anybody," head of UN-Habitat Anna Tibaijuka said in London on Wednesday.

Anna Tibaijuka can take a slow boat back to Tanzania, where she came from - and take the entire NYC United Nations world headquarters with her. They're nothing more than a bunch of stooges. Who needs to hear this shit? If Tibaijuka cared about horrible human suffering, she'd concentrate on Africa and other places that we try to help with foreign aid and many other methods.

[maladroit]

"if you're rich you should be giving a minimum of half your income away"

- what do you consider rich, and to whom should rich people be giving half their money? half seems like an awful lot of money to be giving away...mansions and mercedes don't grow on trees ya know!

[flyingimam]

The big auto makers have been calling for the need for a health care system on par with the rest of the industrialized world for many years - retirement benefits and health care make up a significant portion of their expenses that overseas competitors don't have to deal with. That was one of the stated reasons that Toyota closed an Ohio plant and moved it to Canada - the cost of operations in a country without a national health care system were simply too high to allow them to effectively compete.

its defined as "overhead" the main obstacle that has crippled our "industry" in the past few decades and has reduced it to ailing aerospace and auto industries only as our last remaining national industries... we got no other major industry capable of competing @ a global level anymore (yeah, military and some advanced technologies, but those are kind of exclusive to our own use, plus we're not the only ones with these 2 out there, competition is tough)

[maladroit]

the competition for the defence industry isn't that tough...as you noted, they have exclusive access to a captive domestic market worth a few hundred billion dollars per year with annual increases that exceed the rate of inflation by multiple factors...on top of that, a significant chunk of US foreign aid is linked to military/security so they get that cut too...that's some serious wealth distribution!


The Trillion-Dollar Defense Budget Is Already Here: Newsroom: The Independent Institute

[TheNugget]

"if you're rich you should be giving a minimum of half your income away"

- what do you consider rich, and to whom should rich people be giving half their money? half seems like an awful lot of money to be giving away...mansions and mercedes don't grow on trees ya know!

I think Obama has it pretty right, 250K a year is pretty damn rich. I'd probably make those folks give 1/3 away. From 500K and up should be half, minimum. People simply do not need that much money.

[maladroit]

it's true: people do not *need* that much money, but taking half of the income of rich people seems extreme...1/3 seems about right to me, but the middle class has to pull it's share of the taxpayers burden too...the politicians are always promising to cut taxes and hand out pork, but they never practice fiscal restraint from their side...thanks to that logic from both parties, the national debt is soaring at an unprecendented rate now with even worse debt problems coming down the pipeline, so everyone is going to have to make sacrifices (not just rich people)...the main problem i have with obama is that he is going to increase the national debt by at least $3 trillion...that's still better than mccain who will increase the national debt by $5 trillion...it has been established that both candidates are going to screw america - now we're just haggling over the price

[GoldenBoy812]

US wealth gap among world's highest
Thu, 23 Oct 2008 08:26:00 GMT
A UN report has warned that the high rate of inequality in American cities could cause widespread social unrest and increased mortality.

The annual State of the World's cities report from UN-Habitat, found that New York was the ninth most unequal city in world, the Guardian reported on Thursday.

Atlanta, New Orleans, Washington, and Miami were not far behind, with rankings similar to those of the Kenyan capital Nairobi, and Ivory Coast's Abidjan. Other US cities did not fare any better, as their inequality levels were higher than the internationally recognized acceptable 'alert' line.

You know what is interesting? How many people illegally immigrate to Nairobi or Abidjan to "better their lives"? I mean, there has got to be something here that is working correctly
:jointsmile:

[flyingimam]

You know what is interesting? How many people illegally immigrate to Nairobi or Abidjan to "better their lives"? I mean, there has got to be something here that is working correctly
:jointsmile:

i know u r an intelligent person from your past posts. but u must notice that what u r saying is relevant.

lets look @ it this way, how many people from modern countries come to US illegally? and how many flee the low life of bad areas in mexico to come for the low life of the US, u see its much better for them and in their eyes

I'm from Iran, do u think Iran has a good economy in the world? or u think any part of that dictatorship works "good"?

but people from afghanistan and iraq (before and after both wars) do go there illegally because of relatively better conditions. so its relative, u dont find too many canadians illegally come to the US, because the situation does not force them to do so and even if they want to immigrate due to these very same situations legal paths are much wider for them than mexicans.

we have masked things with borrowing and keeping the spending spree alive, when borrowing stops or slows like right now, things start to look ugly and if this becomes a permanent situation i betcha we will have to switch or reform our ways.

I know "credit" is a very vital thing to businesses and individuals and without it no modern economy can sustain, but we need to make sense of things.

[GoldenBoy812]

i know u r an intelligent person from your past posts. but u must notice that what u r saying is irrelevant.

lets look @ it this way, how many people from modern countries come to US illegally? and how many flee the low life of bad areas in mexico to come for the low life of the US, u see its much better for them and in their eyes

I'm from Iran, do u think Iran has a good economy in the world? or u think any part of that dictatorship works "good"?

but people from afghanistan and iraq (before and after both wars) do go there illegally because of relatively better conditions. so its relative, u dont find too many canadians illegally come to the US, because the situation does not force them to do so and even if they want to immigrate due to these very same situations legal paths are much wider for them than mexicans.

we have masked things with borrowing and keeping the spending spree alive, when borrowing stops or slows like right now, things start to look ugly and if this becomes a permanent situation i betcha we will have to switch or reform our ways.

I know "credit" is a very vital thing to businesses and individuals and without it no modern economy can sustain, but we need to make sense of things.

The reason i posted what i did was to show that wealth gaps in capitalist countries will always exist, and just because they do exist, it is silly to attempt to reform this situation because of "widespread social unrest". If we look at mere immigration numbers, the US would have to rank near or at the top in regards to total immigration (i believe over 12% of the US population are immigrants).

There might be small countries with numbers like that, but not many from the global north...

I do agree that peoples own interests determine global movement. I knew some Canadian people from Montreal who moved to Florida because of the weather and that alone.

Regardless, social unrest can be blamed on the failed drug policy more so than it can be blamed on wealth gaps. The author of that piece (Anna Tibaijuka) fails because she is viewing wealth as a zero sum game.

[maladroit]

wealth gaps will always exist, and nobody is suggesting that they should not exist

the problem is that the wealth gap is too large and still growing...if you think that doesn't cause social unrest, take a look at what the top 1% spends on protecting their 50% share of the entire country's wealth...the poor majority might start supporting revolutionary populists who will turn america into a dictatorship...people like hitler rode into power on a wave of poverty-induced rage