Hillary having the DNC stack the deck in her favor... was illegal. True, but not at the expense of American workers. Currently corporations are getting help, from our very own government, to suppress American wages, making it unfair for American workers, but highly profitable for corporations. The only winners here are corporations. Personally I find it disturbing that American workers are constantly asked to tighten their belts yet the richest people on the planet get to ship more money off to their offshore bank accounts to hide it away from the tax man, due to tax breaks they keep receiving, while more than half of Americans are currently having troubles making it from pay check to pay check. With all the homeless stacking up everywhere, it's pretty clear that neither party gives a shit about Americans. Millennials have the lowest buying power of any generation that came before it. Before them it was Gen X'ers. America's new motto should be: "Lowering the standards of living for Americans since Ronald Reagan"...
Some of that is on Millenials too though, I have so many friends (I'm a millennial) that refuse to put effort at all into their livelihood and wonder wow why am I broke all the time. I agree there is a lot of crony capitalist corruption in our government, but I also don't believe it's the government's job to support me and my family. Most middle-class people have the ability to go get skillsets that are valuable. Yeah, the ultra-rich keep getting richer. I totally agree with you that neither party really cares about American's, they care about doing the least they can to get votes while making themselves rich. That's been politics since as long as politics have existed, it's just more complex than ever with technology giving them new ways to screw the "common people".
Keeping money out of Millennials hands by way of lower wages so that corporations can keep it... is on corporations, and our government for siding with them over hard working Americans. American workers should prosper... along with the country and companies they worked so hard to help build. It's pretty clear that American workers are currently being exploited. Race to the bottom, as they say... That is quite a broad statement myth that people like to believe. To a certain extent it is true, but not in the overall whole. If it were true, America would never have had a time when it's citizens had a middle class and were, at one time, the envy of the rest of the world.
Let's remember that corporations are owned by people - and the big owners of corporations are not the American workers (84% of all stocks owned by Americans are owned by the top 10%). https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/economy/stocks-economy.html So, saying corporations is just a way to mask the wealth disparity in this country. FWIW - 50% of all stocks is owned by the 1%. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-...ks-held-by-american-households-150758595.html
Not necessarily early in a countries lifespan, it's often useful to the rich and politicians to have the wealth spread around more, it helps create "patriotism" and a feeling of such a great country. Greece did the same thing a couple a thousand years ago. They had a strong middle class and it was a large class too. https://ancientgreekwebsite.weebly.com/society.html Gotta remember the US isn't that old. The longer a country is around the less fluidity there is between classes, for the most part, a pseudo-cast system is put into place and held-fast by the elites in just about every country. Newer countries I give you the US as an example have to have the ideals of "everyone is prospering" to get buy-in.
I find it funny that Trump keeps referencing the stock market, as if stock prices/dividends actually directly benefits the bottom line of the majority of the middle class.
This is where I go into major need a tinfoil hat territory but I think the entire "stock market" crap is just basically a giant pyramid scheme they try to force middle class and poor people into shoveling their hard-earned money into. 401K's, Mutual Funds, all that stuff is great they get to hold a bunch of your money for 40+ years for them to screw around with, and they may or may not give you a good payback on it at the end, but don't worry by then you've only got like 20 years to live in poverty anyways, but they thank you for playing... I can't say much I have a ton of money poured into my 401k's and all that garbage, but I'm not super happy about it heh. They don't set up these systems because they're your friends, or because they want you to have a great retirement though, they set them up so they can make the super-rich, super richer. I need to go get some coffee in me and take my tinfoil hat off.
I would actually go back to the biggest lie of this administration (and I actually point the finger here at the Republican party, not just Trump) - and that is the huge corporate tax rate cut they they sold us as a Job growth vehicle. Actually, what it brought us is a giant payback to the stock owners (see earlier post about who these really are) via stock buy-back. https://apnews.com/438fae12f9204b1fbd8e8b1985ae554f "Companies in the S&P 500 spent $806 billion on stock buybacks in 2018, blowing away the previous record of nearly $590 billion set in 2007." The cost of the corporate tax rate to the income of the US government is estimated at $1.5 Trillion over 10 years. This comes to $150B per year. The deficit in 2017 was $666B. It was $779B in 2018. Should be $960 to $1B in 2019. The corporate tax cut is a way to give money for the stock holders (rich) at the expense of every household in the US. This is a world class scam.
This is infuriating. This is when a democracy *should* be able to identify such a blatant situation and say 'um fuck no, we arent doing that'. Its like when there was a mass shooting in New Zealand and the next day the country was like, 'nope, not doing that again, these weapons are no longer tolerated'. We fumble around for years and fight about it and everyone cries about rights and then we just move on to the next debacle.
But it seems to me that America didn't have a strong middle class until the 20th century, making your point invalid. This is nothing more than semantics though, and doesn't come close to dealing with America's currently level of corruption in congress, by both parties.
My wife, who is an accountant, called BS on Trump's tax plan a year or two ago. Once she saw only a very slight increase in her take home pay, and then saw a decrease in her yearly tax refund she said that it was essentially a wash. And I've talked to several others who have had said the same thing. Trump's great tax plan benefits big business and the already very rich....as far as the middle class, smoke and mirrors.
In the east coast, they had a stronger middle class then the west, but there's a reason that it was considered the "wild wild west" for years, as they kind of did their own thing for most of the early period of the countries existence, but yeah I agree the country is corrupt.
It's hard for me to say anything (about the effects on the middle class) because I'm young in my career so my salary has gone up 10-15k every year for the last 5-6 years now, but my tax return's have gone up as well (partially cause of having a horde of children...). Honestly the only time in my adult life that I felt like the Government was completely screwing me over was the Obama care stuff, and I actually feel like medical care for all is a good idea, but that cost my wife and me so much money, our health insurance rates almost doubled, my wife ended up on a government health plan that didn't cover basically anything, I'm sure there was a mountain of paperwork we could've gone through to have some of it covered but that was so frustrating to have 1000's of dollars of medical bills a newborn kid and not enough "know-how" to really know what to do...
No tinfoil hat needed. You are spot on. I hate that I have to “invest” my money because it’s pretty much a no win situation. The stock market is the world’s biggest casino, and just like in Vegas, the house always wins. As a young kid (back in the dark ages) I was encouraged to open a savings account with my berry picking earnings. As I recall, the account paid 4% interest. That might not sound like much but it’s pretty much three times what a savings account will pay you now. Having a savings account today means you almost certainly lose value due to inflation. So now we are forced to gamble (literally) that a rigged stock market will pay us enough to keep even with inflation. And every time the moron currently occupying the White House opens his big stupid mouth, the stock market burps, belches and farts, usually in a direction that helps those who need it the least. We ARE being manipulated and cheated. It is NOT a conspiracy theory. Welcome to Trump’s “great” America.
My IRAs and Mutual funds are now managed by my wife and I.....I took the broker out of the loop..same brokerage but I did what they do....took my money out of the risk game when Trump was elected....now it doesn't roller coaster with every tweet he puts out there....didn't make massive gains the last 2 years but didn't lose a nickel. Any investor can take the management of their investments out of the broker's hands at any time. I lost about 7K overnight when 9/11 happened.....not doing that again. I used to play the money market keeping 3 currencies and buying and selling them....that's where the titans rake in trillions....they can change the value of the dollar with their own money by just moving it into another currency
