re: Republicans Need To Start Acting Like Adults, And Embrace Income Inequality

I think on this often. I strongly believe that income inequality is bad for the economy and growth, but struggle with how one would correct the issue. I'm not talking about poor v middle/upper class, but super high incomes. The summit this past week showed the super high earners are concerned too, as that was a major subject. The liberal idea of 90% taxes over x dollar is dangerous and not something I could support. But, to deny that an issue and possible problem exists is dumb.
It's not like fighting a unicorn. It's more like battling radical religions. They can harm societies, wether is be jihad or radical Christians, but it can be hard to convince people what's unhealthy and their religion is never that. It's a problem when it gets to this point, but where is the point and what is fair to do?

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Income inequality and wealth inequality refer to the same thing.

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Only in the minds of clueless morons

I agree that there must be a strong middle class filling in the gap between the low income group and the wealthy.

The problem is Obama touts income inequality as a problem, yet his administrations policies just make the problem worse.

Fed QE monetary policy artificially drives up the stock market. Wall street gets richer, while the spending power of the low income people is reduced, due to inflation. Rich get richer, poor get more welfare. Middle class is squeezed with higher taxes and inflation.

Taxing the rich more creates a negative attitude for company expansion, or causes outsourcing of jobs, or fleeing the country for more business friendly environments. Same effect with the over regulation of business. This leads to jobs lost. More people fall out of the middle class and into poverty.

This is where the high rate of income inequality has come from. Current policy is destroying the middle class...rich people aren't investing money in businesses, they are hoarding their money.

The only way to fix it is not by increasing minimum wage, nor taxing the rich, etc. It's by creating a more business friendly policy through deregulation and lowering taxes.

To attack the inequality issue, you have to do things that give low income people opportunity to find work, and move up. You can't bring down the top earners, but rather you have to bring up the bottom earners, and that is through creating opportunity, not handouts.

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At least some amount of income inequality will always exist.

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Inequality isn't the issue. Extreme inequality is

Here is another article summarizing a different research paper that looks into the issue of economic inequality as well

LINK

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stagnant income for the “bottom 95 percent” of wage earners makes it impossible for them to consume as they did in the years before the downturn.

Consumer spending, which drives 70 percent of the U.S. economy, dropped sharply during the recession. And while it has picked back up in the years since for the top 5 percent of wage earners — which the Census Bureau defines as households making more than $166,000 a year — “there is no evidence of a recovery whatsoever for the bottom 95 percent,” Fazzari said.

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For two decades after 1960, real incomes of the top 5 percent and the remaining 95 percent increased at almost the same rate: 4 percent a year for those at the top, and 3.9 percent for everyone else. But incomes diverged between 1980 and 2007, with those at the bottom seeing annual increases of 2.6 percent, while income growth for the top 5 percent accelerated to 5 percent a year.

For decades, households at the bottom compensated for that by increasing household debt, which kept consumption — and the broader economy — growing even as interest rates were low and inflation was in check. The paper says the debt-to-income ratio rose nearly 12 times as much for those at the bottom as for those at the top between 1980 and 2007.

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Traditional economic theory holds that during lean times, people draw down on savings or increase debt to sustain their lifestyles. But in the case of the last recession, people in the bottom 95 percent were already tapped out from years of debt-fueled consumption, leaving them with next to nothing to draw on or borrow.

And now, nearly five years into the recovery, the top 5 percent are back to normal, consuming as they did before the downturn. But everyone else is still hurting, and their consumption levels are far below what they had maintained for nearly two decades before the downturn, the paper says.

That is a big problem for the larger economy. Those tapped-out consumers represent about half of the nation’s overall economic activity. With them financially shackled, slow overall growth is all that can be expected, the paper argues.

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I'll embrace income equality if Obama/Progs will embrace work equality. I'll cut my weekly hours back to a paltry 40, and cool it the rest of the time on a guaranteed income.

I am a man of the Spirit; sounds really feasible and productive. And a piece of cake. But then, I aint a weak link. There are TENS OF MILLIONS who wouldn't/couldn't hold down a job for two weeks in a row.

So HH...they just ride the wagon and the rest pull? Boy that ought to really unite the populous in a sustainable economy.

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Kind of like Einstein saying that running a "red light" is generally not a good thing.

You make me blush when you compare me to Einstein. But thanks.

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He was comparing you to the red light. All stop, no go.

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Only in the minds of clueless morons

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They both fall under the umbrella of economic inequality dumbass.

When people talk about income inequality they usually aren't referring exclusively to a yearly income but also the various other assets that account for wealth as well

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but you have to be a special kind of stupid to think that a large gap between rich and poor without much of a middle class is detrimental to a country

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Did you forget which side you're on?

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the ability of low income people to survive on that income.

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Just my thought. Lets have those "poor" foulk give their 60" TV's, one of their 2 cars and their welfare checks back to the Gov and then they can be classifieds as "poor". And stop drinking the government wiskey they use like drinking water, and gambling their welfare checks along the way which will add to that "poor" lable.

Just my thought.

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Did you forget which side you're on?

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No.

And understanding that extreme inequality is a bad thing isn't a partisan issue anyways. Anybody with a brain understands the inherent problems with it and I'm made 2 pretty lengthy posts detailing it.

The partisan issue is what to do about it, if anything.