Inequality In U.S. Is Scarily High, Rising (INFOGRAPHIC)

cawacko said:
What would a sample conversation look like to you based strictly on fact and with no opinions or judgment.
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I might start with the chief accounting officer of sea.gov presenting the demographics of what will happen to social security and medicare over the next several decades. He is not a political appointee and paints a picture complete with good new and bad news and the reasons for each. I might try to offer some comparisons of costs for procedures here and in other countries. I would probably look at some comparative temperatures over the last century, though I'm not sure about that since the temptation to draw unwarranted conclusions is awfully hard to resist regardless of beliefs. That might be a direction, though there are reactions here to at least three separate arguments.
 
evince said:
hahahahahahahahah


you don't know who did it do you
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You are more interested in Big Indian Little Indian. I don't care if it was a republican or a democrat. Bad economic policy. I can see how you would mistake how others are like you, but trust me not everyone is.

I used to be like you, but George Bush cured me of that. As I said they monkeyed with the free market. They deregulated wholesale prices at a time when prices were low. Thy kept retail prices fixed, you know the prices consumers pay?

That worked great for a while, but then wholesale prices went up and the providers could no longer absorb the increased costs because they could not pass those costs onto the consumer which led to shortages.

This always happens when geniuses think they know better than the market. Were electric companies partly to blame? Of course they went along with the scheme.but the politicians thought they knew better and it blew up their faces.

If you want to play the republicans are bad democrats are good game, that may make you sleep better at night, but I am not interested. I am into principle over party. You are the opposite.
 
evince said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis


The California electricity crisis, also known as the Western U.S. Energy Crisis of 2000 and 2001, was a situation in which California had a shortage of electricity caused by market manipulations, illegal[5] shutdowns of pipelines by the Texas energy consortium Enron, and capped retail electricity prices.[6] The state suffered from multiple large-scale blackouts, one of the state's largest energy companies collapsed, and the economic fall-out greatly harmed Governor Gray Davis's standing




The financial crisis was possible because of partial deregulation legislation instituted in 1996 by the California Legislature (AB 1890) and Governor Pete Wilson. Enron took advantage of this deregulation and was involved in economic withholding and inflated price bidding in California's spot markets.[12]

The crisis cost between $40 to $45 billion.[13]
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Since you like to apportion blame, who controlled the California legislature or is that too inconvenient for you.
 
tekkychick said:
Income inequality could sink our country... I don't know what to do about it, but it threatens our democracy.
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Yes, I believe you do. The same thing could be said about most progressives. The only question is when it'll be fully expressed: When we go past the point of no return, or after.

We need to fully abandon our current economic system. If we don't, we'll either kill ourselves, or be forced into the instability of post-revolution.
 
tekkychick said:
And we also need a corresponding boost in the minimum wage - with or without inflation right now, the wage is lower than it should be if it had kept up with inflation all along.
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That might help a bit, but bourgeois economists like Krugman are missing the point. If we raise the minimum wage to an acceptable level (which, politically, is almost impossible), corporations can just leave.

But okay, let's just toss aside the practical issues of raising it, and look at the liberal ideal. What happens if we raise the minimum wage, corporations stay, and Dems control congress and the White House. What will that solve? Prominent Democrats will still be taking aim at social services, bailing out corporations, taking money from the rich, so on. We'll still have a racist court system, global climate change, US support of dictatorships, intellectual property laws, expropriation of surplus value, economic crises, structural unemployment, geographic inequality among public schools, student debt, and so on.
 
Rose said:
That might help a bit, but bourgeois economists like Krugman are missing the point. If we raise the minimum wage to an acceptable level (which, politically, is almost impossible), corporations can just leave.

But okay, let's just toss aside the practical issues of raising it, and look at the liberal ideal. What happens if we raise the minimum wage, corporations stay, and Dems control congress and the White House. What will that solve? Prominent Democrats will still be taking aim at social services, bailing out corporations, taking money from the rich, so on. We'll still have a racist court system, global climate change, US support of dictatorships, intellectual property laws, expropriation of surplus value, economic crises, structural unemployment, geographic inequality among public schools, student debt, and so on.
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OK Rose....I'll bite....although I may be in bed and have to respond tomorrow.....what's your solution? A Communist America? If so....tell.me how America would not befall the fates of other major Communist governments before....totalitarianism, massive human rights violations, and STY's worst nightmare as far as a police state?
 
Steelplate said:
OK Rose....I'll bite....although I may be in bed and have to respond tomorrow.....what's your solution? A Communist America? If so....tell.me how America would not befall the fates of other major Communist governments before....totalitarianism, massive human rights violations, and STY's worst nightmare as far as a police state?
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Why fight it? You know you and other Dumbocrats support this.
 
I agree with both Rose and Steelplate ; raising the minimum wage won't solve things; Dems, while better than repubs, are still in bed with corporations; on the other hand, I don't see a communist society working either, even if we could get to there.

Gotta just keep plugging away and trying to get some progressive leadership in place to make things better. It's slow, it's not sexy, it's not a slogan... but we need to keep doing it.
 
tekkychick said:
I agree with both Rose and Steelplate ; raising the minimum wage won't solve things; Dems, while better than repubs, are still in bed with corporations; on the other hand, I don't see a communist society working either, even if we could get to there.

Gotta just keep plugging away and trying to get some progressive leadership in place to make things better. It's slow, it's not sexy, it's not a slogan... but we need to keep doing it.
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The question is...WHY are both parties in bed with the corps? Why are they representing them and not us? Campaign reform and a stringent oversight policy is the answer.
 
tekkychick said:
I agree with both Rose and Steelplate ; raising the minimum wage won't solve things; Dems, while better than repubs, are still in bed with corporations; on the other hand, I don't see a communist society working either, even if we could get to there.

Gotta just keep plugging away and trying to get some progressive leadership in place to make things better. It's slow, it's not sexy, it's not a slogan... but we need to keep doing it.
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Haha, well, neither do I. Communism just has too many prerequisites. But, unlike you, I've long discarded the idea that we can solve our problems through capitalism. Progressives cling to hopes that, even though capitalism is the source of so many of our problems, it can still save us from them. I make no such presumptions.

What we need, as Kautsky said, is a unification of all proletarian parties, all trade-unions, all cooperative political forces, into a single opposition group. Only then will we be in a position to wage the necessary counter-hegemonic war.
 
Superfreak said:
You are quite sad. what exactly gives you the impression I am not aware it is a movie? Oh yeah, you pulled it out of your ass.

My comments were directed at Desh's comment that it was an interesting concept. Sorry you made me dumb it down to the point that you could understand.
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You know you have started talking to women in a very crude manner. I honestly can't remember, were you always like this?

Was he always like this everyone?
 
tekkychick said:
Income inequality could sink our country... I don't know what to do about it, but it threatens our democracy.
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the repugs have been doing their best to block the u s as a true democratic republic for years, it is the only way that they can maintain power in congress to insure that it is the most do nothing congress ever
 
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