dagblog - Comments for "Class war ya say? Bring it on Baby!"

applauding, too...damn I miss

stillidealistic — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:21:29 +0000

In reply to Class war ya say? Bring it on Baby!

applauding, too...damn I miss firefox...

Also, Cyants.

Bwakfat — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 22:55:12 +0000

In reply to Class war ya say? Bring it on Baby!

Also, Cyants.

Picture me standing up and

stillidealistic — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 22:37:22 +0000

In reply to Class war ya say? Bring it on Baby!

Picture me standing up and appluading loudly...

;0)

Obey — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 21:43:39 +0000

In reply to Class war ya say? Bring it on Baby!

;0)

I'm chuckling and pleased at

oleeb — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 21:28:06 +0000

In reply to Class war ya say? Bring it on Baby!

I'm chuckling and pleased at your reaction coffee or no coffee.

I'm with you on that one,

Nebton — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 21:14:44 +0000

In reply to Class war ya say? Bring it on Baby!

I'm with you on that one, BevD. I'm not optimistic at all about the general populace actually figuring out what's going on.

I'd love to be wrong, though.

. . . I hope you're not

Ellen — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 20:30:19 +0000

In reply to Class war ya say? Bring it on Baby!

. . . I hope you're not serious about supporting Repub phony populism.

Yeah; over-the-top rhetorical excess -- my bad. :-(

That is a gloss, using just

PseudoCyAnts — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 20:14:58 +0000

In reply to Class war ya say? Bring it on Baby!

That is a gloss, using just figures for taxable income, or as your referred to it "earnings" as the measurement's csale. It looks to have been lifted off of a Tax Foundation study, using a bit of rounding to make the figures easier to ingest by the masses. There is another way to measure it, and that is to use ownership of wealth as the scale:

In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth, the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 39.7%.

G. William Domhoff, "Wealth, Income, and Power", UCSC Professor of Sociology, September 2005

You noted that the top 1% of taxable income earners in the US, pay almost 40% of the total income taxes collected, yet 39.7% of all privately held wealth in America is concentrated in the wealthiest 1% of Americans. Remixing these two pieces of data on the palette recolours your drab worker reality portrait of income tax inequity, with much brighter Impressionistic hues.

You assert that the government should not be bailing-out large failing corporations, and there is a great deal of validity to this argument, yet you fail to also note that given the tremendous disparity in private stock ownership between America's that increases exponentially from the poorest to the wealthiest; a proper depiction of the bail-out should capture the real valuation of these government entitlements, and be booked as a mark-down against the income taxes paid by its recipients. This would further dilute the credibility of your charge that America's wealthiest are getting royally screwed by the Nation's lower and middle classes.

It probably would surprise a lot of people to know that less than half of American households are invested in the stock market in any form--either directly or indirectly through mutual funds or 401(k)s. The percentage of households that own stock declined from 51.9% in 2001 to 48.6% in 2004 - the first decline recorded. Furthermore, the percentage of households with more than $5,000 in stock fell from 40.1% to 34.9%--the first decline in this share.

Stock ownership remains concentrated among the wealthiest households. The wealthiest 20% of households own over 90% of all stock value. For the top 1%, the average value of stock holdings was $3.3 million in 2004, down from $3.8 million in 2001. The average value of stock holdings for the middle 20% was $7,500 in 2004, down from $12,000 in 2001

"Wealth Flows To The Wealthiest As The Percentage Of Americans Who Own Stock Falls", Economic Policy Institute, August 29, 2006

Your claim that the government bailout of private business entities in Unconstitutional is over the top, and notably unsupported with any citations from the Constitution. Yet I am able to present a strong argument against this assertion citing a few of the broad powers delegated to the legislative branch in the US Constitution; Article I; Section 9:

Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;
Clause 2: To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
Clause 3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States
Clause 18: To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Twisted Stats issued by whinny poseur libertarians, who fatuously believe that liberty is naught but pigging out at an all you can eat buffet of avarice and greed.

You hit the nail on the head

oleeb — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:54:06 +0000

In reply to Class war ya say? Bring it on Baby!

You hit the nail on the head once again bluebell.

Whenever the cranks spit their venom out I always think of Scrooge braking out something like:

"Late again I see Cratchit! And I suppose you'll be wanting the 25th off again this year with pay eh? I might have known. Whatever happened to an honest day's work for a day's wage?"

I wholeheartedly agree. When

oleeb — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:48:10 +0000

In reply to Class war ya say? Bring it on Baby!

I wholeheartedly agree. When you get down to it capitalism is a system that doesn't work unless you are one of the very few at the top. It's very nature requires that it fail and it has done so in extraordinary fashion this time. That is what necessitates a radical restructuring of the power and wealth distribution in society.