How Do we Bridge the Rich Gap?

Dreamer

Rich getting poorer. There is just too much power in a few hands that leads to dominance over media via disinformation and politics by lobbyists.

just_sayin

@Barnardot

This is some thing that’s getting bigger every day day by day. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. So do we look at making the rich get poorer or do we focus on the poor getting richer?

Dreamer said:

Rich getting poorer. There is just too much power in a few hands that leads to dominance over media via disinformation and politics by lobbyists.

Barnardot's statement is only half true.  The rich have gotten richer.  There are more billionaires today than ever before.  However, the poor have not gotten poorer.  The percentage of poor has declined and more have moved up into the the other quintiles.  Further, age plays a role in wealth.  Older people are in higher income brackets on average than younger, and most younger people will move into higher income quintiles.  Even the top 1% has incredible fluidity, as most people in the top 1% will not be there in 5 years, with a plurality dropping out in 1 year.  The reason is that these individuals had a one time sale of property or businesses that put them in the top 1% for that year, but the following year they drop off.

We should always be aware of the sins of greed and envy that want to take what the rich have.  It seems to me that there is no problem with rich people getting richer.  A lie the greedy and envious tell themselves is that the wealth of some makes others poor.  Actually, the exact opposite is true.  Bezos has made billions with Amazon.  What the envious ignore is that he employees 1.6 million people.  I did not misprint that.  1.6 million employees world wide with the average warehouse worker making  $30950 .  Since these 1.6 million jobs have not gone unfilled, it seems that many think this is a good opportunity for them.  Plus, Amazon has generated billions in sales for smaller companies because of its delivery services.  

Many governments have tried 'sock it to the rich' plans.  Let me list just a few examples to show you how this always backfires.

1) In 2007 Zimbabwe enacted strict food price controls with the hopes of keeping goods and services affordable for the poor.   This was not just greed and envy, but a display of stupidity and lack of understanding of basic economics for as there was an increase in consumers' demands, there was a greater decrease in the amount that producers supplied.

Bread, sugar and cornmeal, the staples of every Zimbabwean's diet, have vanished...Meat is virtually nonexistent, even for members of the middle class who have money to buy it on the black market... Hospital patients are dying for lack of basic medical supplies. (cited from Social Justice Fallacies, p 56)

People struggled to find food because of the price controls.

2) Maryland passed a tax increase on incomes of a million dollars or more and expected to see $100 million more in revenue in 2008.  However, the number of millionaires in Maryland decreased by 2,000 in 1 year and the anticipated increase of $100 million resulted in a net budgetary loss of $200 million dollars per year.  - Source: Wall Street Journal, 'Maryland's Mobile Millionaires', March 12, 2010, p. A18.

3)  Maryland didn't learn their lesson though and in 2017 enacted a tax hike on Yachts - which many were made in Maryland at the time.  It was thought this will only affect the rich.  Who else buys a yacht, but evil rich people, right?  According to the Maryland Department of Legislative Services, the state’s yacht tax, which was enacted in 2017, resulted in an estimated loss of 1,000 to 1,500 jobs in the state’s marine industry. Turns out that rich people have enough money to travel to the Caribbean and buy their yacht there.  Who would have "thunk" such as thing?  Surely, the rich will just not react to tax hikes and do nothing, right? That's what SJWs tell us. Too bad for all the people who lost their jobs because someone thought it would be good to sock it to the rich.

4) Oregon raised income tax rate in 2009 on people making $250,000 a year or more and instead of revenues increasing, it fell. (see here)

For those who think that socking it to the rich is the only way to increase revenues, let me give you 2 examples:

1) Iceland gradually lowered its corporate tax rate from 45% to 18% between 1991 and 2001.  The result was that revenues increased 300%.  More businesses were willing to start and locate in Iceland with a lower corporate tax rate.

2) The federal income tax rate in the US for the highest incomes in 1920 was 73%.  In 1928 the rate was reduced to 25%.  Not only did the total amount of taxes increased, the amount of taxes collected from millionaires drastically increased from less than 5 percent in 1920 to 15.9 percent in 1928.  The odd thing is that if you aren't trying to steal someone's wealth, they will invest it in your country and not hide their money elsewhere.

Greed and envy are the opposite of compassion.  Trying to 'punish the rich' will not help the poor - this is a social justice warrior fallacy.  Instead, history has repeatedly shown that the opposite is true - that when you punish the rich, the ones who actually suffer are the poor.  I suggest that those with envy and greed for the wealth of the rich repent of their sins and instead focus their efforts on lifting up the poor, not tearing down the rich.  

Bogan

It is just amazing that 40 years after the fall of left wing socialist totalitarianism. people like Dreamer still think that left wing socialism is the way forward again?       it did not work in 46 countries but somehow Dreamer thinks that it can still work.     It is just like the old USSR's failed "five year plans".    The last several were disasters, but don't worry comrades, the next one will work, for sure. 

If Dreamer had any brains, which I doubt, he might consider how it is that all of the technological  progress in the world came from the free market west?     It is invention and innovation which drives prosperity today.    Look at Israel, no natural resources whatsoever except the brains of it's people, and it is an economic (an military) success.    Israel has the highest proportion of scientists and engineers of any population in the world.    

Dreamer keeps submitting topics which supposedly "prove" how evil free market economies are, totally ignoring the fact that if they are so bad, why does every person from some third world sheethole full of du-mb people al want to live with us?      Whatever rich/ poor imbalances occur within free market economies, it just so happens that they are nothing compared to what happens within left wing (and right wing) socialist totalitarian societies.     Such societies are pyramid shaped with the very rich at the top of the pyramid, a few selected top bureaucrats below them, and the mass of the people all desperately poor.     Such societies never invent anything and innovation is non existent.    If white western societies want to reduce poverty, stop importing i. and stop subsidising it  .     It is as obvious as an outback dunny that some races and ethnicities are just not smart enough to survive in a competitive western world, where merit and not DEI is the key to success. 

John_C_87

@Bogan

The economy of capitalism is not free, that is kind of the whole point of capitalism isn't it. There is no free market and all of what you’re saying is just a lie no nation can live up to. Free market.

John_C_87

@just_sayin

The issue with Tax hikes is they are transferable so because they are placed on one object does not me it is where the cost in fact falls in an economy that is free or not free, which is basically what you had said. However what is not talked about is the rich can choose a lot more other means to control their tax liablilaties by making controbutions and make private donations. Giving them more control over what or who the taxes go to. Does this mean less Federal Notes are left to be only used in the public political sense setting conditions of cost on two side of an economy.

just_sayin

John_C_87 said:

@just_sayin

The issue with Tax hikes is they are transferable so because they are placed on one object does not me it is where the cost in fact falls in an economy that is free or not free, which is basically what you had said. However what is not talked about is the rich can choose a lot more other means to control their tax liablilaties by making controbutions and make private donations. Giving them more control over what or who the taxes go to. Does this mean less Federal Notes are left to be only used in the public political sense setting conditions of cost on two side of an economy.

I can't say I fully know what you are trying to say.  I don't want to ignore you though.  The rich do not make the laws - politicians do.  The rich do have lawyers and accountants who can explain to them the laws and place their money where ever it is most to their advantage.  As long as people think the rich are like chess pieces that can be moved about on a board where ever they want, and don't realize that they respond accordingly to whatever law is passed, attempts to punish the rich will just end up hurting the poor.  Take minimum wage laws for example.  Many claimed that they would make employers pay more - however, what happens when you raise a companies costs and not its revenues is that the company responds to this by cutting workers hours, benefits, or just firing people.  Before minimum wage laws Black teen unemployment was actually lower than white teen unemployment, since they were implemented, it has given cover to racism and the Black teen unemployment rate has been at least 10% greater than white teen unemployment rate - and sometimes much, much more than that.

MayCaesar

I am still waiting for an example of a developed country in which "the poor are getting poorer". When I first heard this claim about 10 years ago, I searched through the data on every single country, and aside from a couple of failed African states, I could not find any country in which the lowest segment of the population would demonstrably be getting poorer over time. Has something changed since then?

The standards on the West are also insane. If you cannot immediately buy a house upon graduation with your Bachelor's, then you are "poor". You know what being poor meant in my home country, in my childhood? It did not mean opening your fridge and seeing nothing in there; if you had a fridge, you were already, at least, okay. It meant running to the creek in the morning to fill the bucket with water so you had something to drink before running to your work ("Public transportation", you said? Hah!) and slaving away for 10 hours for 20 cents per hour. It meant living in a communal house with 3-4 other families. It meant picking berries and mushrooms in the forest in the summer and selling them for pennies because you needed every penny you could get.

As far as I can tell, 90% of Westerners have never seen "poverty" as it is seen by the majority of human population. Go to some remote village in northern India, or Nigeria, or Bolivia, and live there for a year, then come back to your luxurious apartment in New York City, or London, or Paris, and tell me how miserable the little you are in a horrible capitalist economy. Most people here cannot even imagine that it is possible to live, say, without running water, or a functional sewer system. Newsflash: roughly 10% of the people in the world have no electricity. And just 15 years ago this percentage was close to 25%. So in 15 years more than half of the people with no electricity acquired it, which is phenomenal. So how are the poor getting poorer again?

Barnardot

@MayCaesar ;I could not find any country in which the lowest segment of the population would demonstrably be getting poorer over time. 

If your got absolutely nothing how on earth could you get any poorer? Not exactly a fair point is it and I'm sure that nearly a quarter of the world's population would make mints meat out of your ignorant observation.

just_sayin

@Dreamer

I was hoping you would respond to my post:  https://debateisland.com/discussion/comment/170493/#Comment_170493

How does being envious of the rich and trying to take what they have legally earned, help raise up the poor?

In just 20 years, capitalism has lifted nearly a billion people out of extreme poverty. Capitalism has reduced the workweek by %25, raised the average age people started to work, In 1900, the average life expectancy worldwide was 31 years; today it stands at 71 years.   Thank you capitalism for the medicines that you created that otherwise would not have been.  If you think I'm wrong and that envy is the answer, then defend it.