"This chart, ... from Pavlina Tcherneva, an economics professor at Bard College, and it also shows the distribution of national income growth during economic expansions. The difference is that it shows the share of the top 10 percent, and it shows it for every single expansion since World War II.




Kevin Drum MJ

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"The truth is incontrovertible.
malice may attack it,
ignorance may deride it,
but in the end,
there it is." -Sir Winston Churchill

The top 10% are crafty!

I told everyone on here that this would happen. If you didn't want it, you should not have voted for the guy. But you did anyway. So pat yourselves on the back for screwing the lower and middle class. You may also pat yourself on the back for further enriching folks like me, just like I said it would.

But none of you have learned a damn thing. Even though your people have greatly exacerbated the problem (as well has made it more permanent), you'll nonetheless vote for those same people, who will promise to fix the problem that they helped create. They won't, of course. But the tpapablos of the world will amass their fortunes and, when the shit really hits the fan, head off for greener pastures, like many corporations are already doing. Kind of like the dolphins in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "So long and thanks for all the fish."

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I :heart; Q

Are you asserting Mitt would have decelerated the transition?  Nuts. 

Yep.

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I :heart; Q

It has been diverging since WWII.

Of course, everyone knows this.  The war took our lopsided robber baron system that had been coming since the Civil War and smashed it flat.

It's just going back to where it was.  Our natural state is as the Mexico of development nations.  That's the sad reality.

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A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

The top 10% are crooks.

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Replace turf grass with native plants that don't need irrigation and synthetic fertilizers or chemicals that can go into our waterways and ocean

Money shufflers
The takers

" told everyone on here that this would happen. If you didn't want it, you should not have voted for the guy."

Reagan? I certainly did not.

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"The truth is incontrovertible.
malice may attack it,
ignorance may deride it,
but in the end,
there it is." -Sir Winston Churchill

That doesn't surprise me on bit.

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I :heart; Q

It's interesting that the trend was slighly reversed for the Clinton years. Gotta love Bill! Go Hillary!

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Replace turf grass with native plants that don't need irrigation and synthetic fertilizers or chemicals that can go into our waterways and ocean

Karl Marx predicted this long before Pablo. The New Deal and the subsequent rise of the middle class just slowed it down. The decline and fall of false communism signaled the capitalists that there was no need to preserve the middle as a buffer anymore so now we are realizing the true end point of unregulated free markets.

A hungry mob is an angry mob. After the revolution I'll put a good word in for Pablo, but he'll most likely still end up against the wall.



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“It is the heart of US policy to use fascism to preserve capitalism while claiming to be saving democracy from communism “ - Michael Parenti

It's getting so bad that my dream of one day traveling to Tampa and dining at Chick Fil-A may never come true. 

That was funny.

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I :heart; Q

Cutting the tax rate for the wealthy to 25%, exchanging over time pay for comp time that no one has time to use and gently raising tax rates on the Middle class would do wonders for Joe Sixpack!

Republicans for the Middle Class!! Her dee har harr

Tpap should go into standup.


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I was right.

Very square of you, Rusty. I'm cool with a firing squad. There are worst ways to go. And I will live it up in the meantime.

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I :heart; Q

Get yer pitch forks boyz, get that money from the hard workin people and take it from them. How short sighted. Progland

Hard working?  That's all it takes to get rich?  So why aren't most firemen, cops, teachers, soldiers, landscapers all living in the nicest part of town?  Seems more like desk jockeys at banks and law firms are more likely to live in a big house but least likely to sweat.  Me thinks that hard work can lead to wealth but that inheriting it is more the norm than the exception.  Are we to assume that the middle class and the poor are all slackers?  

If you wanna see hard workers, follow migrant workers.

Fourteen hours a day of office poltiics is not hard work.

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A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

The way I see it is, is there are many factors involved, but the largest and most obvious one to me is that labor is an evergrowing and expendable resource and market, while ownership and entreprenerial skills are dwindling. If you want to have even a chance at creating a substantial income(that will keep up with inflation or international markets) you have to first find a career which doesn't have to compete with labor rates in over the border countries (No trade or labor restrictions will guarantee that either). Second, you have to either own income generating investment (such as property) or own your own business for two reasons. First, property values/ other similar investments will almost always give you a lifelong return as opposed to getting paid an hourly wage which the value dissappears anytime you are laid off or there is inflation. Second, soon as you have a value creating business it's going to be worth more than an hourly wage will pay anytime for the main reason that you don't have to physical work at it and can hire labor at a much lower rate than the value you are getting. If you read the link below, you'll learn that the majority of that top 10% don't even have to work and that's because they let their investments work for them.

Unfortunately, the only way to achieve these things is to first earn enough money to own investments and also to take a risk which might mean starting over several times, until you find the big winner. However, it's not impossible for us "middle-class" as it's also shown that a good majority of the top 10% or the upper class are "self made" billionaires.

With all that said, I can see how a lot of people like to blame our government, the economy, the president, or other things, but I still have no idea how any of that has to do with us not being in the top 10% or dwindling incomes. Sure it could be worsened or improved but that is still something that's manipulated. The downward trend/ reversal starts all the way back in the 70's and even if tax laws try to even the odds $ will still end up in the hands of the top 10%. I am curious though as to what caused the slight reversal during Clinton's administration and why it was so different back in the 50's, that the top 10% couldn't grow their income, while the lower 90% could.

link:http://beginnersinvest.about.com/od/wealthmanagement1/ss/capitalist-class.htm

Edited: 09/26/2014 at 10:47 PM by Sector9surf