A Look at America's Problems
Feb. 23rd, 2011 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThese 8 charts illustrate key problems with America's wealth distribution and how it affects the country. Link courtesy of my partner Doug.
America now functions more as a plutocracy than a democracy. A tiny number of super-powerful people control a majority of the wealth. They are over-represented in the government. Wealthy people thus make decisions to benefit themselves, while harming the vast majority of citizens. Many people do not have enough money to live on, which is to say, meet the demands placed on them by the wealthy. The result is a floundering economy because there is simply not enough money left to the bottom 80-90% of people to keep it going. Too much of the money is being hogged by too few people who are using it in ways that aren't producing a healthy economy, no matter what kind of smokescreen they try to blow over the disaster.
America now functions more as a plutocracy than a democracy. A tiny number of super-powerful people control a majority of the wealth. They are over-represented in the government. Wealthy people thus make decisions to benefit themselves, while harming the vast majority of citizens. Many people do not have enough money to live on, which is to say, meet the demands placed on them by the wealthy. The result is a floundering economy because there is simply not enough money left to the bottom 80-90% of people to keep it going. Too much of the money is being hogged by too few people who are using it in ways that aren't producing a healthy economy, no matter what kind of smokescreen they try to blow over the disaster.
Cite evidence, please.
Date: 2011-02-25 04:29 am (UTC)My apologies for the 'anonymous' post, but I don't have an LJ account. I am an avid reader of ysabetwordsmith, however, and am most frequently referred to on this site as "My partner Doug".
Re: Cite evidence, please.
Date: 2011-02-25 06:24 pm (UTC)What I *will* give you is someplace to go look at if you're actually interested in understanding instead of just making the standard "I'm gonna try to look clever and dismiss him by requesting impossible levels of information."
1: "Please provide verifiable documentation for your assertion" RE: the wealthy making more contributions to Democrats.
Where you can look to see this is a matter of public record - the records on campaign contributions. Although the recent Obama election did not follow the standard pattern (gaining lots of donations from across the board), if you look at the data for elections previous you can see the pattern where Republicans vastly outnumber the Democrats in campaign contributions from a very large number of small donations - that is, primarily from the large numbers of lower-to-middle class donations. Meanwhile, the Democrats get the largest percentage of the money given through very large campaign contributions - that is to say, wealthy individuals pledging thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars to the Democrat cause.
For reference to Democrats increasing the gap between the rich and the poor, again, will just give you the overview -
During the time of the Industrial Revolution, and a period of time I'd be willing to say likely lasted through the world wars, there was, I'm sure there will be not too much debate, a very large problem with business taking advantage of employees. In some parts of this country, that still goes on to a lesser extent, though happily there are no regions where there are a majority of people having to work 80-120 hour work weeks year-round, any more. To solve this problem, a good amount of worker protection laws were put into place.
In the decades since, more and different problems have continued to arise in the arena of employee relations and compensation. Through it all, the Democrats have continued mainly with the same type of legislation. Strengthening union power, decreasing employer power, more and more regulation, raising the minimum wage - on and on and on. The simple assumptions being - if it worked on the old problems, it should work on the new problems. The main flaw being that the world had changed, and blindly doing the same thing over and over was no longer *fixing* the problems, but making them worse.
For instance, you can see this in rising minimum wages. The lowest level of uneducated workers would get more money in wages... bringing them up to the level of minimally educated workers. Then the lowest and minimally educated workers were bumped up some more, bringing them to the level of educated workers. This essentially 'clustered' everyone into a 'class' of workers at the bottom, since the government was now declaring, 'this is what people need to make.' This higher cost of production, along with the clustering of employees, had the result of raising the price of goods - thus resulting in no increase in *buying power* for the workers whose salaries had been increased. Quite the opposite, often this resulted in a *decrease* in buying power for those workers whose salaries had increased, not to mention a more severe decrease in buying power for those workers whose salaries had not changed. Meanwhile, jobs moved out of the areas with an artificially inflated wage level and cost of living, making the situation further exacerbated - now, all the 'clustered' employees got to fight for a reduced number of jobs.
Re: Cite evidence, please.
Date: 2011-02-25 06:25 pm (UTC)All of this creates a 'class' of employees... but with that class all clustered together nicely, that means that the percentages, which are required to stay about the same for a healthy business, no matter inflation, result in a much larger profit.
I once did the math, a long time ago, on what would happen if you took that larger profit and distributed it amongst workers. I got something like less than $100 more a year. The profit basically disappears. I also took it and considered what would happen if it went to the top earners - it resulted in tens of thousands of dollars more a year.
What's more, what with union laws, and democrat legislation prohibiting employers from treating employees differently than each other, not to mention increased threat of lawsuits all over the place, this money also cannot be redirected very easily towards those doing better work. The Democratic legislation trends towards 'everyone is equal, and should be treated the same.' This results in pay based on seniority, not effect.
Additionally, many 'private' industries have their prices set for them by the Democrats. For instance, if a hospital wants to remain competitive, and wants to serve poor people who are injured, they need medicare money. But in order to receive medicare money, they need to accept government price-setting. Having a family who's worked in medical billing, and knowing just how much doctors and nurses have to break the law just to lower the price on someone's medical care by falsifying records... I know JUST how much of the overpricing problem for medical care today results from government price setting.
With a solid pattern put in place via Democrat legislation and union contracts, we can now determine exactly how much money people need to get by, given the guidelines laid out by the government on exactly what your minimum is. What's more, a lot of Democrat anti-competition laws prevents companies from lessening the profit margin they make, or otherwise playing the market to try to provide better services for more money.
For instance, the fuel industry here in Wisconsin. Democrats passed a law saying that the fuel industry has to make a certain level of profit to 'discourage unhealthy competition.' Not long ago, a particular business lowered their prices a few pennies lower than the minimum profit they're allowed to make, in the midst of fantastically rising gas prices. The immediate reaction by Democrats in the area was to not only threaten the owner of the business with jail, but a lawsuit on top of that, for daring to lower his prices.
So with these elements laying out the pattern, we see that Democrats have clustered the employees into a single group around the bottom of the spectrum, instead of having it spread out across the whole spectrum, and are laying out legislation raising the prices of what we use every day. This does not *stop* the spectrum from being laid out, and in fact, allows the spectrum to stretch all the further... but removing people from the center of that spectrum. Thus, this increases the raw financial gap.
Re: Cite evidence, please.
Date: 2011-02-25 06:25 pm (UTC)Going back to the medical industry, which I'm very familiar with thanks to having lots of extended family members in the industry, such as a father who's a low-paid Physical Therapist, or my mom who worked for 30 years as an RN, I am very familiar with the fact that Democrat policies regulating medical care REMOVES a great deal of choice from your health care. Newer procedures - better or cheaper than the old procedures - get caught up for years, and years, and years in legislation to 'authorize' them for use in the hospitals through the medicare system, making it hard for people to get the care they want. In general, the high levels of legislation make it hard for any industry to be as flexible as it could be, since everything has to go through so much red tape to make any changes - and any mistakes are fiercely punished with lawsuits.
What's more, is the Democrat decision to flat-out remove choices altogether to 'eliminate harmful competition'. For instance, hardline phone companies, cable companies, and the like, do not have to compete with each other for your dollars with level of service and low bills - instead, they often just have to complete with each other for the government contract for your area. A government contract which is rarely based on quality of service, but instead is determined by a hueristic based on how many local minority-owned businesses the nation-wide company farms its work out to.
Or, alternatively, as we have here in Wisconsin - if you're in a government union position, you have the chocie of whether or not to be in the union... but not the choice of whether to pay union fees. People who do not want to be in the union end up paying out money to the unions anyway. And so, Democrats legislate that public taxpayer money goes to unions - which the unions turn around and give back to Democrats during campaigns.
Or, as one of Obama's first half-dozen actions in office - removing the right of free speech from Employers... by making it a federal crime to answer employees who are asking questions about unions.
Re: Cite evidence, please.
Date: 2011-02-25 06:25 pm (UTC)School vouchers represent the CHOICE that money gives to wealthy people. School vouchers would reduce the gap between wealthy children and poor children in getting a choice in education - but Democrats regularly work against school vouchers, keeping the good schools for the wealthy, and keeping their control over poor people by deciding what schools they are allowed to go to.
And you can look at my livejournal (through ysabet's name) for my personal history with the Milwaukee Public School system. I won't recount the entire thing here - but suffice to say I have excellent reason to see them as caring NOTHING for the education of the students or the conditions they learn in. Seeing as they told me flat out that the quality of work done is not a priority in any way for them.
*deep breath* *lets it out slowly*
And yes. That's the SHORT version.
So in briefer-brief:
They cluster people at the lower end of the spectrum, remove opportunities for people to get ahead through making individual deals and choices by legislating that every employee must be treated the same, price-set vital elements of our economy, and remove our choices.
Re: Cite evidence, please.
Date: 2011-02-25 08:41 pm (UTC)I do not believe they are doing this *on purpose* through any sort of conspiracy. I believe it is a series of well-intentioned legislation that was not well thought through past the initial and immediate result - working off the base classist assumption of 'noblesse oblige,' where the noble class is supposed to 'take care of' the worker class.
The problem is that the person who knows most about farming - is the farmer. The person who knows most about business - is the businessman. The person who knows most about medicine - is the Doctor. Being a good and intelligent politician or legislator or administrator does not give the knowledge to regulate these elements, and regulation inherently limits the very necessary agility and flexibility of these elements to respond to the changing world around them.