The other day, I was involved in a discussion about income inequality. Now the term "income inequality" is indeed something of a misnomer, in that many people interpret it as meaning that one who believes it is a problem, is advocating a standard income for all. Which is the furthest thing from the truth. Of course there will be differences of outcomes in a growing economy. However, what the term income inequality really refers to is the ratio: The fact that growing numbers of American corporations are hauling in wads of cash for the elite who run the corporation without doing anything to help the constituencies that they-as publically chartered corporations (or at the least, entities that operate in the public sphere)-interact with and represent.
The discussion spriraled quickly, as they so often do these days, into conservative talk radio talking points with someone inevitably spouting the completly bogus and unethical line: " Stop trying to take from others and instead go out and make your own money. Stop being jealous of the success of others."
It is total and complete bullshit. Here is why:
One of the big reasons the U.S. economy is so lousy is that big American companies are hoarding cash and "maximizing profits" instead of investing in their people and future projects
This behavior is contributing to record income inequality in the country and starving the primary engine of U.S. economic growth — the vast American middle class — of purchasing power. (See charts below).
If average Americans don't get paid living wages, they can't spend much money buying products and services. And when average Americans can't buy products and services, the companies that sell products and services to average Americans can't grow. So the profit obsession of America's big companies is, ironically, hurting their ability to accelerate revenue growth.
One obvious solution to this problem is for big companies to pay their people more — to share more of the vast wealth that they create with the people who create it.
The companies have record profit margins, so they can certainly afford to do this.
But, unfortunately, over the past three decades, what began as a healthy and necessary effort to make our companies more efficient has evolved into a warped consensus that the only value that companies create is financial (cash) and that the only thing managers and owners should ever worry about is making more of it.
This view is an insult to anyone who has ever dreamed of having a job that is about more than money. And it is a short-sighted and destructive view of capitalism, an economic system that sustains not just this country but most countries in the world.
This view has become deeply entrenched, though.
The authors of the viewpoint that it is nothing but envy, are engaging in group selfishness. They justify their own selfishness, by projecting on others the idea that they have a right to be that way. They don't.
In other words, you get told that anyone who suggests that great companies should share the value they create with all three constituencies instead of just lining the pockets of shareholders is an idiot.
After all, these folks say, one law of capitalism is that employers pay their employees as little as possible. Employees are just "costs." You should try to minimize those "costs" whenever and wherever you can.
This view, unfortunately, is not just selfish and demeaning. It's also economically stupid. Those "costs" you are minimizing (employees) are also current and prospective customers for your company and other companies. And the less money they have, the fewer products and services they are going to buy.
Obviously, the folks who own and run America's big corporations want to do as well as they can for themselves. But the key point is this:
It is not a law that they pay their employees as little as possible.
It is a choice.
It is indeed a choice, and a poor one. One thing I have noticed however,is that most of the people who think they have a responsibility to chastise me-live in a bubble of belief. Primarily they believe that nothing bad is going to happen to them, they are fine, and always will be. And furthermore, if anything bad does happen to someone else, its all that other person's fault for being unprepared. This arrogant attitude persists, even though they themselves are just one serious illness, or a layoff away from catastrophe themselves. Nor do they feel a responsibility to see the situation change. After all, "they give to charity". Which has zero to do with the central problem at hand.
If that is not hypocritical-I don't know what is.
Well said.
It is not a law that they pay their employees as little as possible.
It is a choice.
That is why they should not pass Immigration reform. If they think that making them legal will solve our labor woes, it will not. If they become legal, then they can't get away with paying them less than what a US worker needs to make.
Just like the proposed plan by HUD to level the playing field by investigating the discrimination in housing by zip codes, in order to make it more fair. Not going to work. Not that I am saying poor people don't have the right to a better life, but you just can't plant someone in an area that they are not prepared to do what is necessary to maintain and upkeep the property. I'm not talking about keeping up with the Jones' but just being able to pay the every day requirements (property tax, etc.) If they think it is a good idea, then the first place they should start is Beverly Hills 90210, or Hyannis port MA. I am sure that a different tune will be sung then.
LIke him or not Henry Ford did believe that if he paid his employees a fair wage, they would be able to at least buy his products. I think that is what many industries seem to forget.
Hypocritical is whining about how some people are reluctant to pay debts they did not incur while at the same time whining about paying alimony and having some of their retirement pay diverted to the wife they cast into the outer darkness.
Hypocritical is progressive think tanks and news sources whining about the rich failing to pay their employees a lot more than the legally mandated minimum wage while at the same time NOT PAYING their interns who do a lot of the work at liberal progressive think tanks and the democratic propaganda truth ministry.
Hypocritical is shouting for the State to compel by force what it cannot command with a majority vote of the citizens of the Republic and then crying foul.
Hypocritical is praising Bill Clinton and beseeching others to pay no attention to his human failings as a man and then observing that Filner, Weiner and Spitzer are despicable women-hating scumbags.
I'm slowing down. What is the "central problem at hand" now? Global Warming? Climate Change? Rising sea levels? Fracking? Peak Oil? Sequestration? $69 TRILLION National Debt? Quantitative Easing? Syria? Iran? Nukes? Earth crossing asteroids? Affordable Care Act that washes money through everybody's hands except the medical professionals? Unchecked immigration and open boarders (yes, that was deliberate)? CO2? Methane Clathrates? The War on Drugs? Drug resistant VD and Typhus? The War on Poverty? DOMA? Terrorism? Homeland Security Agents? Armed Drones? Drone Strikes? Inexplicable bee die-off? Genetic Modified crops? UKIP? TEA Party?
I read it before it went away. I decided to think about it a bit before writing more. Very few of us have any regrets about paying what we owe. We reserve the right that we have though to decide what we owe and to whom we owe it. I never surrendered my right in this regard to you or anyone like you. I feel a great deal of contempt though for people who think I made some agreement to give them anything they want from me in return for nothing and then call me selfish when I object.
My government has spent trillions on the War on Poverty without doing much more than mostly destroy the black family in America. It never lifted anyone out of poverty. It spent trillions fighting the War on Drugs to no effect at all other than to stuff the prisons to bursting with non-violent drug offenders and make felons out of a significant number of Americans. It is doing the same insane thing with its takeover of health care.
I object to this destruction waged in my name by you and those like you. I strongly object to stealing the birthright of all future Americans to pay for the shit you want here and now and your continuous demands that not just I pay for it but that the next 5 generations of Americans must pay for it now.
Mutatis mutandis. In 20 years you and I won't go near a 'health provider' since they'll be like 'womens doctors', except these providers won't exterminate the unborn, they'll euthanize the old in order to save money they don't have because you and those like you stole it all.
Don't you just fucking hate grifters?
I object to 6000+ Americans getting killed for nothing-in far off Muslim lands, which contribute nothing to the overall defense of the United States. I never got a vote in that decision. Furthermore-we spent a lot more on this endeavor than we ever spent on domestic things.
I'd also point you to the fact that, as documented in the Economist, the world has made a lot of progress dragging people out of poverty. Furthermore, it is the job of each generation to try to improve the quality of life for the generation that follows.
You also could explain explain why "the Constitution" mandates that a law passed by the Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court isn't really a law if Curtis doesn't think it is. What we should be doing is trying our best to make the law work. America needs health care reform.
Plus this isnt't about taking money from you. Its about the greed and advocation of selfishness by corporations-who have the money to pay their people decently and prefer not to do so. In our society, we have little other option than to shame them. And they need to shamed. That is the authors point.
I know how you feel about the tea party but MOST Americans, based on polls, have little faith in our government and of course, congress.
How did this happen?
By the way, of course you had a "vote" in us going to war. YOUR represenative voted for or against.
Lets get back to the authors central point-corporations are sitting on wads of cash-yet wages in the country are stagnant.
As for government-yes it is dysfnctional, but we have no other choice. We have to find a way get it to work.
Your Rep and Senators voted in your place and for us that went to war. I have no quarrel with that. That was a part of the contract I signed when I took the oath. I didn't sign on to have my pocket picked by grifters and chizzlers every time I stand up and neither do my representatives or Senators.
You know what I enjoy is watching the grifters squirm when they find that the law does not support them and then watch them whine and complain about it and rush to change the law. Those firms siting on billions of overseas profits are doing nothing unlawful here or abroard or they'd be in court right now. They refuse to repatriot the earnings because of the confiscatory tax your friends imposed on such movement of $. That's OK. There's plenty of countries willing to take the money you guys insist on having all of because it is yours and it is your right to choose what to do with it. I'm going to watch and laugh when the landowners and environmentalists EAT the California ruling class high speed train to nowhere for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every dime appropriated will go to the lawyers from now on until forever. It will last 10 times longer than the A-12 fiasco.
Did you see that your friends in Japan put the equivalent of 25% of their GDP into quantitative easing last year and got NOTHING at all for it? Pissed over a trillion $ away on the ludicrous idea that governments invest and get a ROI. Rather pathetic really.
If you look it was capitalism and its derivatives that dragged people around the world out of poverty. You can't see that. You also can't see that the LAW on Health Care is not a LAW if the President can just decide to exempt his friends, roll back the mandatory start dates set by the LAW when it was signed and enacted and now exempts congress from it which the law specifically forbade. That's not really a law now is it? It's sort of like a guideline or a hope or maybe a unicorn.
Curtis,
I firmly disagree with you on most of your points-especially those about Japan.
Furthermore, in the long run-the "they have not done anything illegal" defense ignores the real issue. Namely that if you don't float the boats of the middle class you do not stir the nation to recovery. But in this country we have people who are dedicated to a form of cruelty.
"Something terrible has happened to the soul of the Republican Party. We’ve gone beyond bad economic doctrine. We’ve even gone beyond selfishness and special interests. At this point we’re talking about a state of mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering on the already miserable."
Skippy,
Curtis can be very passionate about his POV, just like you. But Japan does have some serious financial issues that government investing has not helped at all(and now a contiuning disaster at Fukishima) Indeed, Japan is going to have to cut billions in spending.
Its interesting to look at history and how we handled the depression and mass unemployment THEN. One has to avoid overly romantizing that era BUT Americans then WANTED to work and
when the opportunity arose they stepped up to the proverbail plate. Like the conservation corps, whose works are STILL evident these many years later.
Now we have a culture that expects to get something for nothing. John Stossel interviewed some folks in the line for "welfare"..They had flat screen TV's, micro waves, CELLPHONES etc.
What kind of poverty is THAT? indeed, when I was on food stamps for 6 months i saw myself a number of people with cells..what the heck!!! and of course having kids they cannot afford to feed etc. This is not a REPUBLICAN canard but an actual FACT.
Look, I think children are innocent and need to be taken care of but I am tired of these people gaming the system and being irresponsible for themselves and thier kids. Why should I or any law abiding citizen PAY for thier miscreant behavior. They need to be FORCED to work, clean their streets, pickup the trash for a few hours a day(think Detroit) instead of getting fat on my dime.
RANT over…whew that felt good…
Richard,
I know where you are coming from. I have a very close family member who is doing just that, gaming the system. Now that one of her kids is going off to college, and the other two have kids of their own (no jobs, one in prison), she is playing the "crazy kid" angle with the one remaining with her just so she can get the bump in welfare since she has a kid that needs to be sedated. Speaking from first hand experience, nothing wrong with that kid, just needs to have her ass "whupped" real good. But my close relative doesn't just come up with these ideas on her own, there is a whole subset of people who have managed to game the system and get more in benefits that one wouldn't expect someone to need if they were poor. My other close relative (male) lost his job, and since he at one time was making more than his "fair share" he is not entitled to any help, and he has had to struggle to get work. Yet, the one relative will not do just that to better herself.
Same issue with the school lunch and breakfast programs. If the number of people on food stamps is so high, then why are schools serving more breakfasts and lunches (in the summer and on weekends) if the needy children are supposedly getting food assistance from their parents. It all boils down to what you said, there are many people who have an attitude of "gimmie" instead of trying to change their behavior. We have come a long way from JFK's quote of asking not what our country can do for us, but what we can do for our country, on both sides of the aisle.