Wealth Gap: A single image is worth a thousand words...

"The value of history is, indeed, not scientific but moral: by liberalizing the mind, by deepening the sympathies, by fortifying the will, it enables us to control, not society, but ourselves...

...a much more important thing; it prepares us to live more humanely in the present and to meet, rather than to foretell, the future."

~ Carl Becker, 1873-1945, U.S. historian

Far from accepting the current economic situation as inevitable, the history of income inequality in the U.S. is evidence that government policies tilt the balance of economic compensation in favor of the rich.

With the past centuries being disproportionately favorable to the wealthy, and the fact that greater income inequality has been correlated with higher levels of crime, stress, mental illness, and some other social ills, it's about time to start leveling the playing field...

Overcoming Poverty In America Is Not an Act of Charity, It Is an Act of Justice.

CJ, if you keep putting crap like this on the board, I may just have to join the crowd and put you on Ignore.

Autism Awareness Day was 2 months ago

Greta Thunberg is being pimped by progressives.

Hey CJ,

3 questions:

1. What do you do for a living?

2. How much do you make a year?

3. What percentage of that do you donate to all the causes you talk about here?

The rich are rich coz they exploit everyone else. Its a fact.

^ Incorrect

The poor choose to be poor; the fat choose to be fat; thde rug addict chooses to be a drug addict and they all vote for Democrats. CJ lives in a cardboard box.

Ha ha - CJ’s trolling us.
No one would write out Greta’s name like that unless they were busting balls.

Literally any physically and mentally OK person can make a good life for themselves with moderately hard work in America.

I don’t mean rich necessarily, but a good life. No one can seriously dispute that.

It’s not like that everywhere, which is why there’s migration here.

Why is America different and exceptional when it comes to wealth and abundance ? (even our poor are fat and have smart phones)

It’s the result of ambitious innovators, many of whom form corporations, who exchange part of the wealth they created with those who will work for it.
Henry Ford lifted a lot more people into a comfortable middle class life than LBJ and his Great Society.

I know plenty of people who slave their entire lives and don't have anything to show for it financially. Not because of poor choices but lack of opportunity low wages high prices. Some people with higher degrees and great jobs barely making it coz missing student loan payments can cost them their professional licenses.

People slowly dying because of no recourse with their Healthcare costs.

America can be a literal hell.

Hard work doesn't mean anything. Were all at the mercy of capitalist greed

Ha ha - I know a lot of gents from Mexico who would disagree.

So idk how much you know of this, and apologies if I’m over-explaining, but economists like to use a “gini coefficient” as a way to measure inequality. At zero, everybody has literally the exact amount of everything and at one, only one entity has 100% and everybody else has zero.

The gini coefficient in California is .49
The gini coefficient in Utah is .40

Maybe the two individuals who are unhappy in this thread could go over there instead. 😁

Who knew that spice was an economist ?

@Studme53

To real answer your question:

Why is America different and exceptional when it comes to wealth and abundance ?

It is a product of imperialism/capitalism, which was facilitated by centuries of domination attained through occupation and economic exploitation of indigenous people.”

The US today, is wealthier, richer, because these riches were acquired at the expense of the people of color they “colonized“

Pareto's Law of Income Distribution forms the basis of the well‐known, but often overlooked, 'eighty‐twenty' rule. The implication is that a small proportion of customers are accountable for a very large share of sales turnover or income. It also applies to other areas of life and economics. In any organization, 80% of productivity is produced by 20% of the workforce. Accordingly, it seems fair that 80% of income would go to 20% of the population. That probably works in the NFL or NBA as well.

I assume that CJKent is in the 80% of the population and he is very, very angry about that to which I suggest he get over it.

The Comanche displaced, exterminated or enslaved every other tribe in most the Southwest and Northern Mexico, and the only thing they had abundantly were territory, horses and buffalo. They didn’t innovate and create wealth like the great industrialists of the 19th and 20th centuries, who made this country the land of opportunity.

The life of native Americans, prior to colonization, was nasty, brutish, and short. Starvation. Human sacrifice. Tribal warfare.

That’s not a comfortable fact for those who like to criticize western culture. They prefer to imagine a garden of Eden prior to the white man.

Similarly, countries that were colonized in the 19th and early 20th century got the benefit of infrastructure and a judicial system that was in place when they gained their independence. The modern citizens in those countries are arguably better off than if there had never been a period of colonization.

But, that doesn’t match up with “ white people evil, people of color victims”. There are a mix of good and bad people within any group.

Your class positions are an example of the dangers of the wealth gap op profuse. You're proving his point

Recommend “Empire of the Summer Moon” by S.C. Gwynne

@Studme53

Those you call “great industrialists” are also called "robber barons", because of the less than honorable deeds they perform to create wealth like poor conditions for workers, and killing workers that asked for better working conditions.

Only because such people were able to amass great amounts of capital could our country become the world's greatest “industrial power” also called “American imperialism”, using military conquest, gunboat diplomacy, unequal treaties, subsidization of preferred factions, economic penetration through private companies followed by intervention when those interests are threatened, or regime change.

All these “innovations” to “create wealth” also have enabled our present-day standard of living such is the banking-debt slavery system of America and the western empires, the newest, most ingenious form of slavery in the history of mankind.

Yes yes gunboats and what not. You and AOC are real history scholars.

Getting off your ass to earn money to pay off the debt you willingly took on for the comforts of life isn’t slavery.

In Boston the chant used to be "yankees suck". They actually didn't; Boston sucked, and we were jealous of our inability to compete and succeed. That simple chant, is the sole platform of all progressives, because they are jealous of the ability of others to compete and succeed.

^ I thought they used to sing Sweet Caroline
😂😂

“The money pigs of capitalist democracy….

Money has made slaves of us…

Money is the curse of mankind.

It smothers the seed of everything great and good.

Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood.”

~ Paul Joseph Goebbels
~ Doctor of Philology, University of Heidelberg, Germany 1921.
~ Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (1933 - 1945)
~ Born 29 October 1897 Rheydt, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire (now Germany)
~ Died 1 May 1945 (aged 47) Berlin, Germany

^ I’m having fun spending it you’re just jealous

Goebbels, like the left wing of the Democratic party, was a socialist and birds of a feather .......

^ Don't think Goebbels is the best guy to quote, when talking about how society should be.

You realize that Goebbels’ special skill was propaganda, right ? Telling the big lie to the people. Every word he uttered was calculated to further the Nazi Party.

“What will be destroyed in this war is a capitalist clique that was and remains willing to annihilate millions of men for the sake of their despicable personal interests.“

You should decide whether something said, written or quoted makes sense by its content, not by the person who writes or says it, regardless of the letters after his or her name, title or position in society, age, nationality...

When you append a name, you are attaching their authority to it.

Let's be hardcore money slaves so we don't wind up like Nazi Germany.