Paying for the ad at the bottom is pretty typical behavior! [video=dailymotion;xex9rz]http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xex9rz_gordon-gekko-greed-is-good-full-spe_shortfilms[/video]
Interesting paper from NBER, the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER is the entity that determines if and when the economy is in recession or not. http://www.nber.org/papers/w15351.pdf
The paper requires a subscription... Thanks for posting. The articles are a few years old but I'm going to read them when I have some free time tonight. Income/wealth disparity in America is a complex topic. I'm interested in the explanations Fitzgerald proposes.
It's easy to believe the talking points and hype. Bill Gates having so much money has never bothered or affected me, except that I got the benefit of using Windows for all those years. My pay went up over the years as I gained experience in my field. My homes all sold for more than I paid for them. The longer I stayed in a home, my discretionary spending increased. I don't think I'm extraordinary or atypical in those regards. As I've always seen it, the rich can have all the money they can amass as long as the rest of us do better over time. It sucks that I didn't productize MSDOS and make a fortune, but I'm satisfied there's always a chance for anyone to do so. Nobody was able to prevent a couple of college kids from making Google or Facebook.
Nearly all Americans, including most wealthy Americans, agree we should tax the rich more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20114988-503544.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/27/millionaire-tax-warren-buffett_n_1035763.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/28/buffett-rule-poll_n_985154.html The only debate left is whether America is still The Land of The People or not.
Lol Buffet doesn't like the so-called Buffett rule. He thinks it's bad for the economy to tax the quantity and earning level of people democrats propose. And HuffPost is an anticapitalist echo chamber.
From Maris' top link: So, to get this straight, the large majority of people in the US think that the government has a negative impact on most people's lives, but the vast majority of Democrats and Independents want other people (not themselves!) to pay more into that negative impact? Why not just pare down how much impact that the government can have? America's still the Land of the People...unfortunately it's the Land of the Largely Uneducated, Narcissistic, Non-Accountable People.
From the second link: I was asking this yesterday...is the OWS movement about income, or wealth? Even HuffPost bloggers don't seem to know.
From the third link: So if OWS got its way, it would add 1.3B a year to the coffers of the US over the next decade. Those 60,000 people would just have to suck it up. OR.... Every one of the 76,000,000 tax returns that didn't pay a dime in federal income taxes this year could pony up $20. That would add more revenue than the Buffett tax. Though, in both of them, it covers 1/1000th of government overrun. So, uh, not sure that that would be a net "win." Not like, say, not spending almost 4T when you only have 2.3T to spend.
What do you do when the majority of the citizenry is "Uneducated, Narcissistic, Non-Accountable"? Re-education camps? "cleanse" the population? ship them all off to some newly discovered island continent?
HuffPo is insufferable. The comments are possibly worse than YouTube and half the articles posted on the site are flattering write-ups about Jennifer Aniston or Gwyneth Paltrow. During Jenny McCarthy's insane reign as leader of the anti-vaccine movement HuffPo backed her like nobody else and when she was exposed as a twit they kept supporting her. Even now there is still an anti-vaccine sentiment on the site despite the children that have become ill or passed away as a direct result of not being vaccinated. HuffPo seems to cater to self-righteous left-wing middle-aged women who just know better than everyone else. Probably as misogynistic a post as I've ever written.
