Greedy Capitalists Hogging Wealth Are Not Causing Income Inequality

[NotNow]

Yes, I think that "perspective" would be very important.

[Timkin]

Never mind that there are more ways than military service to 'serve' this country or our society.

I would certainly like to see more of this...

How do you mean?

Paid opportunities... with benefits similar to the military... providing service to the country.  Not everyone is able to serve in the military.  Contrary to popular belief... they are pretty selective.  Those who do not make the grade to serve in a military capacity should be able to serve in some other form.

One example could be service in the National Park service... or some kind of education support service.  I would welcome anyones ideas for such a program...

Anyone can serve now by volunteering.  There is the Peace Corps, which offers an avenue of service for all ages.  There is the Job Corps, which offers free occupational training and education for young people.

I don't personally believe that there is any way to replicate an institution such as the US Military in any civilian service agency.

I agree with your point of there not being a way to replicate an institution such as the US Military in any civilian service agency...to a point.

Not Now.. you know that I almost never enter a debate....  I think for years prior to "don't ask ,don't tell " there were plenty of people WILLING to serve in the US Military , but they were not allowed to IF they are Gay.  If they did serve and it was found out , or they were "caught"  they were ousted, under dishonorable or other-than-honorable discharge.    So , quite simply ,some people never served because they were never allowed to, Some attempted to serve but was ousted because of this ( I personally think it is ridiculous, nevertheless) Some served, said nothing , never got caught , lucky them . Now it is no longer an issue.  Too little, too late.  I don't mean to steer totally off topic. 

I wholeheartedly agree with Stephen on a point he makes  ( and both of you know I never get in the middle of an exchange between you two)     THERE ARE OTHER WAYS to serve our Country....MANY other ways.   Law Enforcement personnel , for example.    Personally I think working for or volunteering for charitable foundations or agencies, helping the elderly , helping the homeless, helping feed the homeless, Habitat for humanity, community volunteers ,etc , etc.  These are (other) ways we serve our Country.

When I was a Senior in High School I was pressured , upon graduation to enlist in the Marines.  I never did ,because I knew they did not, at the time allow gays in the military. PERIOD.   So I never attempted enlistment , although I did have to keep draft info current  for years following.

Maybe my points make no sense at all, but I have the utmost respect for Law Enforcement and Any/ All Military service personel, either serving , reserve , or retired.   Likewise my hat is off to a volunteer on any sort of scale.

[NotNow]

MEYER, DAKOTA

Rank: Sergeant
Organization: U.S. Marine Corps
Company: Embedded Training Team 2-8Division: Regional Corps Advisory Command 3-7
Born: 26 June 1988, Columbia, KY
Departed: No
Entered Service At: Louisville, KY:
Date of Issue: 09/15/2011
Place / Date: 8 September 2009, Kunar Province, Afghanistan 

  Citation

Corporal Meyer maintained security at a patrol rally point while other members of his team moved on foot with two platoons of Afghan National Army and Border Police into the village of Ganjgal for a pre-dawn meeting with village elders. Moving into the village, the patrol was ambushed by more than 50 enemy fighters firing rocket propelled grenades, mortars, and machine guns from houses and fortified positions on the slopes above. Hearing over the radio that four U.S. team members were cut off, Corporal Meyer seized the initiative. With a fellow Marine driving, Corporal Meyer took the exposed gunner's position in a gun-truck as they drove down the steeply terraced terrain in a daring attempt to disrupt the enemy attack and locate the trapped U.S. team. Disregarding intense enemy fire now concentrated on their lone vehicle, Corporal Meyer killed a number of enemy fighters with the mounted machine guns and his rifle, some at near point blank range, as he and his driver made three solo trips into the ambush area. During the first two trips, he and his driver evacuated two dozen Afghan soldiers, many of whom were wounded. When one machine gun became inoperable, he directed a return to the rally point to switch to another gun-truck for a third trip into the ambush area where his accurate fire directly supported the remaining U.S. personnel and Afghan soldiers fighting their way out of the ambush. Despite a shrapnel wound to his arm, Corporal Meyer made two more trips into the ambush area in a third gun-truck accompanied by four other Afghan vehicles to recover more wounded Afghan soldiers and search for the missing U.S. team members. Still under heavy enemy fire, he dismounted the vehicle on the fifth trip and moved on foot to locate and recover the bodies of his team members. Corporal Meyer's daring initiative and bold fighting spirit throughout the 6-hour battle significantly disrupted the enemy's attack and inspired the members of the combined force to fight on. His unwavering courage and steadfast devotion to his U.S. and Afghan comrades in the face of almost certain death reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.


BASILONE, JOHN

Rank: Sergeant
Organization: U.S. Marine Corps
Born: 4 November 1916, Buffalo, N.Y.
Departed: Yes   

  Citation

For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous gallantry in action against enemy Japanese forces, above and beyond the call of duty, while serving with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division in the Lunga Area. Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, on 24 and 25 October 1942. While the enemy was hammering at the Marines' defensive positions, Sgt. Basilone, in charge of 2 sections of heavy machineguns, fought valiantly to check the savage and determined assault. In a fierce frontal attack with the Japanese blasting his guns with grenades and mortar fire, one of Sgt. Basilone's sections, with its guncrews, was put out of action, leaving only 2 men able to carry on. Moving an extra gun into position, he placed it in action, then, under continual fire, repaired another and personally manned it, gallantly holding his line until replacements arrived. A little later, with ammunition critically low and the supply lines cut off, Sgt. Basilone, at great risk of his life and in the face of continued enemy attack, battled his way through hostile lines with urgently needed shells for his gunners, thereby contributing in large measure to the virtual annihilation of a Japanese regiment. His great personal valor and courageous initiative were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

http://www.cmohs.org/



Commercial fishing?  If you can't see the difference, our perspectives are VERY different StephenDare!

[NotNow]

I noticed that you saw in the article that you posted that in 2008 "Security Guard" had entered the top ten most dangerous occupations.  Note that in the list that you provided, for 2010, that "Police Officer/Sheriff's Deputy" was listed in the top ten.  But the point, whether Military or Police, is not the death rate.  The point that you don't grasp is that these young people and all those Officers fell while going in harms way for the sake of others.   That doesn't sound like much, does it?  I, and many others, can assure you that it is a life changing experience. 

An article that YOU might be interested in (a little dated, but the point remains):

http://www.nysun.com/new-york/heroes-and-cowards/48926/

[NotNow]

Timkin,  I agree with you that there are many ways to serve this country.  Of course service in our Armed Forces is special and should be recognized as such.   Thanks for your support of military and law enforcement.  I have known several gay persons in the military and many in Police work.  I can honestly say that knowing their sexual preference meant nothing, as they have all been dedicated and just as professional as any other soldier, sailor, marine, or officer that I have known.  Today these labels mean very little to most of us.  (Believe me, the last thing any Officer cares about is who or what someone is sleeping with, as long as they are acting reasonably.) 

And although StephenDare! and I argue quite a bit, and of course he is missing his "perspective" on this one, I assure you and anyone else reading this that Dare! has supported Police Officers in the past when he did not have to.   I don't mistake his opinions about the military for lack of courage or something on his part.  I truly believe that he is seeking the truth in his own way as we all are.  I don't believe that he wishes any ill will, he is just stating his beliefs as he has come to know them in his own journey through this life, as we all are. 

Of course he is still wrong. 

[Timkin]

...And far be it from me to try to be the decider of who is right or wrong... Lord knows I have been wrong countless times in my life.

  You make very valid points.... and so does he.  It is not a matter of side-taking on my behalf.   

As to your position about Armed Forces being special and recognized as such, I seriously doubt Stephen or anyone else would dispute that point , and I can only speak for myself when I say I wholeheartedly agree with YOUR point.

[second_pancake]

'household' is too tricky of a term to gauge correctly anyways, notnow. 

How do you count two couples living in the same house that both pay taxes?  Is that one household or two?

What if one couple pays taxes and the other doesnt?  Would you count that as a 'household' that doesnt pay taxes or one that pays half taxes?

What about unmarried people in the same home?

Or tax paying children of tax paying parents?

Or taxpaying children living with non tax paying parents?

Its just a ridiculous claim notnow and a moments reflection should have cleared that up.

In fact, it is a measure of total americans.

22% of americans (or households, if you like) recieve social security.  They are presently income tax exempt, but have already paid an adult lifetime of income taxes.  Don't you think its dishonest to represent these people as 'not paying income taxes' in this context?

They paid the amount they agreed to pay.  Income taxes until retirement.  basically 45 years of taxable income.  That's their fair share, thats what our budget figures are based on, and it is a lie to pretend that they are somehow slacking off of their commitment.

Shameful.

The second group of people reflects the tax credits given for the raising of children.  The deductions are like your fair tax.  They are the same amount no matter how much you make in income.  No child is worth more than another child to the tax man.  So if those children were in wealthy families instead of poor families, the amount that the government allows for all of them is the same.

Obviously a poor family will quickly deduct enough for their children that they do not owe any income taxes.  That is because the amount per child is the same no matter what income level.  Taken together, the earned income tax credit, the child credit, and the childcare credit account for about 15% of the people who pay no federal income tax.

http://dmarron.com/2011/07/27/why-do-half-of-americans-pay-no-federal-income-tax/

It is so dishonest to make this kind of claim that I think people who continue to make it after they have been corrected deserve to be known as what they are:  malicious, willful, demogogic liars.

Wow, looks like you're right on something??  Ok, just a little bit...because while you're right in saying that making a blanket statement like, "50% don't pay taxes" is dishonest, yes it is.  Anyone that works in this country (legally works, meaning they don't get handed cash under-the-table so to speak), has to have a federal account number (this is your SSN for those that may not know), to which all of your government taxes are held, so yes, anyone that works pays taxes.  However, and you knew this was coming, those 50% being referenced receive tax refunds equal to or even greater than the amount of taxes they've had deducted and paid into the system.  Net/Net realization = $0 or -$0 dollars.

[second_pancake]

Damn it, I pulled a StephenDare and shot off at the fingertips before I fully read something. Shame on me ;-)  I just saw and read the link you posted ~sighs~.  Now I have to admit that you had the facts right on something.  Copy and paste this or bookmark it cause it's not likely to happen again ;-)

[finehoe]

The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen

Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That's why we're nearly bankrupt

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves â€" that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive â€" are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.

The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. "The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill." Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.

Such results have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers throughout Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin. When Kahneman tried to point this out, they blanked him. "The illusion of skill … is deeply ingrained in their culture."

So much for the financial sector and its super-educated analysts. As for other kinds of business, you tell me. Is your boss possessed of judgment, vision and management skills superior to those of anyone else in the firm, or did he or she get there through bluff, bullshit and bullying?

In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. They compared the results to the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses's scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact, on these criteria, they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders.

The psychopathic traits on which the bosses scored so highly, Board and Fritzon point out, closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for. Those who have these traits often possess great skill in flattering and manipulating powerful people. Egocentricity, a strong sense of entitlement, a readiness to exploit others and a lack of empathy and conscience are also unlikely to damage their prospects in many corporations.

In their book Snakes in Suits, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare point out that as the old corporate bureaucracies have been replaced by flexible, ever-changing structures, and as team players are deemed less valuable than competitive risk-takers, psychopathic traits are more likely to be selected and rewarded. Reading their work, it seems to me that if you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family, you're likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family, you're likely to go to business school.

This is not to suggest that all executives are psychopaths. It is to suggest that the economy has been rewarding the wrong skills. As the bosses have shaken off the trade unions and captured both regulators and tax authorities, the distinction between the productive and rentier upper classes has broken down. Chief executives now behave like dukes, extracting from their financial estates sums out of all proportion to the work they do or the value they generate, sums that sometimes exhaust the businesses they parasitise. They are no more deserving of the share of wealth they've captured than oil sheikhs.

The rest of us are invited, by governments and by fawning interviews in the press, to subscribe to their myth of election: the belief that they are possessed of superhuman talents. The very rich are often described as wealth creators. But they have preyed on the earth's natural wealth and their workers' labour and creativity, impoverishing both people and planet. Now they have almost bankrupted us. The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are some of the most effective wealth destroyers the world has ever seen.

What has happened over the past 30 years is the capture of the world's common treasury by a handful of people, assisted by neoliberal policies which were first imposed on rich nations by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. I am now going to bombard you with figures. I'm sorry about that, but these numbers need to be tattooed on our minds. Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%. But from 1979 to 2009, productivity rose by 80%, while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%. In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%.

In the UK, the money earned by the poorest tenth fell by 12% between 1999 and 2009, while the money made by the richest 10th rose by 37%. The Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, climbed in this country from 26 in 1979 to 40 in 2009.

In his book The Haves and the Have Nots, Branko Milanovic tries to discover who was the richest person who has ever lived. Beginning with the loaded Roman triumvir Marcus Crassus, he measures wealth according to the quantity of his compatriots' labour a rich man could buy. It appears that the richest man to have lived in the past 2,000 years is alive today. Carlos Slim could buy the labour of 440,000 average Mexicans. This makes him 14 times as rich as Crassus, nine times as rich as Carnegie and four times as rich as Rockefeller.

Until recently, we were mesmerised by the bosses' self-attribution. Their acolytes, in academia, the media, thinktanks and government, created an extensive infrastructure of junk economics and flattery to justify their seizure of other people's wealth. So immersed in this nonsense did we become that we seldom challenged its veracity.

This is now changing. On Sunday evening I witnessed a remarkable thing: a debate on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral between Stuart Fraser, chairman of the Corporation of the City of London, another official from the corporation, the turbulent priest Father William Taylor, John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network and the people of Occupy London. It had something of the flavour of the Putney debates of 1647. For the first time in decades â€" and all credit to the corporation officials for turning up â€" financial power was obliged to answer directly to the people.

It felt like history being made. The undeserving rich are now in the frame, and the rest of us want our money back.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/07/one-per-cent-wealth-destroyers

[finehoe]

those 50% being referenced receive tax refunds equal to or even greater than the amount of taxes they've had deducted and paid into the system.  Net/Net realization = $0 or -$0 dollars.

Oh, so these are the people you're talking about: 

More than 1,500 millionaires paid no income tax last year, according to federal records, mainly due to tax loopholes and savvy accountants.  American millionaires receive more than $30 billion in government subsidies each year.  The $30 billion in handouts, to put it in perspective, amounts to twice as much as the government spends on NASA, and three times the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. ... The biggest money comesâ€"or goes, ratherâ€"through unpaid taxes.

http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=bb1c90bc-660c-477e-91e6-91c970fbee1f

[BridgeTroll]

More than 1,500 millionaires paid no income tax last year, according to federal records, mainly due to tax loopholes and savvy accountants

Were these illegal?  My guess is no.  But most of us are right there with ya... most of us have been screaming for simplification of the tax code and closing loopholes.

American millionaires receive more than $30 billion in government subsidies each year.

According to the link you posted...

These billions of dollars for millionaires include $74 million of unemployment checks, $316
million in farm subsidies, $89 million for preservation of ranches and estates, $9 billion of
retirement checks, $75.6 million in residential energy tax credits, and $7.5 million to compensate
for damages caused by emergencies to property that should have been insured. All and all, over
$9.5 billion in government benefits have been paid to millionaires since 2003. Millionaires also
borrowed $16 million in government backed education loans to attend college.

Are you suggesting means testing for retirement benefits?  How about unemployment checks?  We could probably find common ground in the elimination of residential energy credits, ranch and estate preservation and federal insurance for uninsured homes.  Clearly means testing for college loans needs tightening too...

See... we DO have common ground...

[finehoe]

Were these illegal? 

Did either second_pancake or myself say those not paying were acting illegally?

[BridgeTroll]

Were these illegal? 

Did either second_pancake or myself say those not paying were acting illegally?

So the problem... as many of us have said all along... is government. 

[buckethead]

Just like the Miller Lite commercials, both sides are "right". Tastes great... Less filling. (Although these are value judgments which can be debated).

It is the government's fault and it is the corporations fault.

They are in bed together. Corp A might be in a different position than Corp B, and the same goes for politicians A and B. It is still an orgy.

As long as we address one side, we address nothing.

[BridgeTroll]

Ah... so what one side sees a corporate handout or welfare for the rich... the other sees a stimulas or an incentive.

These billions of dollars for millionaires include $74 million of unemployment checks, $316
million in farm subsidies, $89 million for preservation of ranches and estates, $9 billion of
retirement checks, $75.6 million in residential energy tax credits, and $7.5 million to compensate
for damages caused by emergencies to property that should have been insured. All and all, over
$9.5 billion in government benefits have been paid to millionaires since 2003. Millionaires also
borrowed $16 million in government backed education loans to attend college.

Solyndra was just the latest example of a corporate handout or corporate welfare...  or was that an incentive or stimulas??