Obama supporters should read this — Living the American Dream (wages, salary)

[buzzards27]

Your pushing a fallacy. Wealth mobility exists but while about half of the households changed quintiles, the magnitude of the movement is modest, with 3/4 of the movement to an adjacent quintile. Movements into either extreme of the wealth distribution are relatively rare. Really big moves, from the poorest to richest group, were extremely rare

Originally Posted by Freedom123

In a static economy, your point about generating dollars every year is correct, but that would also mean our society is no longer free and the economy would suffer due to less wealthy people's reactions to confiscation. Do you really think other people are going to strive hard to build anything if it is at the risk of being seized?

If you're for total confiscation, there's not much you and I can compromise on. Is there no middle ground for you?

Is this really your solution? How would you get it through Congress?



Feel free to do your own research and let us know. The lower two quintiles are under $18K per year. It seem that only people who acquire wealth from poverty and the working class matter to you. I guess the middle class doesn't matter, even if those middle class people came from poverty, worked hard and their kids became wealthy in the next generation.

Have you considered those doctors may have worked their way through school, up from poverty themselves? Or does it no longer matter after one generation? I guess the few doctor friends who grew up in the projects with me are OK according to your philosophy, but if they help their kids become wealthy somehow their kids become the bad ones you don't give a crap about?

[Randomdude]

Originally Posted by Freedom123

How am I misquoting a source that is arguing that most millionaires are first generation rich? Source: Page 15

Its arguing nothing of the sort. Its arguing that most millionaires were simply not handed a stack of money, immediatley making them millionaires.

Originally Posted by Freedom123

You're arguing about 19%, which means 81% do not have this luxury. Sorry, you'll have to point to lines and paragraphs that actually prove the majority you're looking for.

You have pointed out nothing showing this book breaking down the remaining 81%, outside of the fact that a chunk of them inherited something less than 10% of their total fortune.

Originally Posted by Freedom123

My source states that more than 50% never received even $1 from an inheritance. That means more than half were self-made. How does that compute with your statement above?

No it doesnt. There are not 2 types of people, those who inherited a huge cash inheritance, and those who are "self made". JFK never inherited a dime, George W. Bush never inherited a dime.....yet, clearly, both were complete creations of their lineage, most accurately, their fathers.

In your book, since JFK and Dubbya didnt inherit anything, they obviously must be self made. Lets just ignore the millions of dollars Joe Kennedy spent greasing every important persons palms on the planet, and the countless strings he pulled to specifically groom JFK at every step to be the president. By the way, how did JFK get in to both Princeton and Harvard.......and stay there dispite being a below average student and taking huge amounts of time off to go galevanting around Europe?

Originally Posted by Freedom123

Regardless, what are your solutions and compromises to resolve this "problem"? I've proposed a few in this thread.

For a start


- Roll back tax rates to what they were in the early part of the 20th century
- Tax high frequency trading, require possession of commodities, and eliminate derivative and short trading from Wall Street.
- Roll back capital gains tax breaks, and treat dividend income as special. This will reverse the trend of companies just sitting on gobs of money.
- Eliminate corporate income tax altogether
- Move to a fair tax system, where all goods over 35k are subjected to a national sales tax. This amount will be adjusted with inflation.
- Significantly reduce the department of defense. Much of this can be done by going through the contracts with a fine tooth comb.
- Adjust minimum wage to living wage, and peg it to inflation, so price increases are always trailing wage increases.
- Create a Depression style public works program
- Eliminate for profit medicine. Put everyone on a national healthcare system that directly negotiates with medical care companies, or require that each state has such an option. This will reduce medical expenses by far.
- Tighten up immigration. Anyone who is not a US citizen doesnt get any benefits period. Companies caught employing any illegals have their business assets seized on the spot. On the same note, I will sew up ridiculous holes in the citizenship process, such as non citizens who serve in the military would be afforded full citizenship.
- Legalize and therefore tax, most drugs, including all natural ones
- Pull us out of global conflicts, treaties, policies, and welfare agreements
- Enact tariffs on everything coming in to this country
- Make student loans competitive, and based on student academic performance, community and national service, and course of study. Giving out money to anyone with a pulse is clearly not working.
- Invest heavily in job training and hard skill development. Invest in replacing "degree requirements" with this training, in many fields.

Originally Posted by Freedom123

Actually that "stupid book" did address that. Once again, see my source above for first-generation rich. Or, are you trying to argue and negate some people's success for growing up middle class? Would you prefer if every rich person grew up in poverty?

Your quoted source doesnt address anything of the sort.

Youll find, if you actually do a little research, less than 9% of the people in the top income quintile came from the bottom two. That means, almost EVERYONE who is filthy rich, started upper middle class, to filthy rich. Very few people who grew up dirt broke to lower middle class, are anything more than that themselves.

[MTAtech]

Originally Posted by buzzards27

Your pushing a fallacy. Wealth mobility exists but while about half of the households changed quintiles, the magnitude of the movement is modest, with 3/4 of the movement to an adjacent quintile. Movements into either extreme of the wealth distribution are relatively rare. Really big moves, from the poorest to richest group, were extremely rare

That's right. People change income quintiles but they are usually moving short distances on the income scale. A lot of people move from, say, the top of the second quintile to the bottom of the third quintile or vice versa -- but such moves are trivial in terms of their true income position. Big moves, jumping more than one quintile, are much less common; yet it’s those big moves people have in mind when they talk about, mobility.

Translation: sure, many people who have incomes greater than $1 million one year fall out of the category the next year — but that’s typically because their income fell from, say, 1.05 million to 0.95 million, not because they went back to being middle class. And the new millionaires are typically people who were making just shy of a million the year before, not Horatio Alger stories.
Millionaire For A Day - NYTimes.com

It's all in the CBO report.

[Randomdude]

Originally Posted by Freedom123

Feel free to do your own research and let us know. The lower two quintiles are under $18K per year. It seem that only people who acquire wealth from poverty and the working class matter to you. I guess the middle class doesn't matter, even if those middle class people came from poverty, worked hard and their kids became wealthy in the next generation.

Mostly, the only truly "self made" people are from the lower classes. They are the only people who someone never lent a hand to. They never had any connections, nobody ever paid their way, or gave them money for a business venture. Nobody ever left them anything, or sent them to private school. Their mom/dad never played golf with the Senator, nor were nepotismed into the family business.

Guess what, not surprisingly, people from here almost NEVER make it. Walk in to an elementary school in the inner city or Appalachia, look around. Over 50% of them will die broke, period. Of the rest, maybe 30% will eek out some sort of living. Only 9% will be comfortable.

Then we all wonder why inner city parents think their kid has a better chance at being a professional athlete than a doctor, and while they believe that the only chance theyll ever have of ever getting out of poverty is winning the lotto.

Its mostly because its the truth.

Originally Posted by Freedom123

Have you considered those doctors may have worked their way through school, up from poverty themselves?

This almost never happens, especially after 1980. Its a complete myth peddled to the ignorant masses to keep them placated and continuing to chase the carrot.

Originally Posted by Freedom123

Or does it no longer matter after one generation? I guess the few doctor friends who grew up in the projects with me are OK according to your philosophy,

If you knew 2 people who grew up to be doctors that came from extreme poverty, you should also know about 23 who made it no further than lower middle class, most of them making it no higher than being broke themselves. All of them were peddled the same BS dream, and all had the same BS carrot dangled in front of them. No doubt, many of them worked extremely hard, but fell short because

- They got shot
- Couldnt finish school because they had to take care of their family
- Didnt have any connections
- Couldnt qualify for any assistance and couldnt afford school
- Couldnt overcome abject poverty, and everything that goes with it, such as being malnurished, abused, abandoned, living in unsafe or unsanitary environments, and either left it, started dealing drugs, or ended up in jail or with severe psychological problems
- Had some big idea or talent, but nobody with the money to develop it.

Originally Posted by Freedom123

but if they help their kids become wealthy somehow their kids become the bad ones you don't give a crap about?

Exactly, people who had a boost getting wealthy are NOT self made. They got a boost. Maybe they didnt inherit 2 million bucks, but they had more than an average Joe had.

[MTAtech]

From the CBO report I mentioned above:



Yes, some kid from the ghetto gets to be a basketball player. But the evidence is overwhelming, more and more income is concentrated in the upper 1% since 1979, while it's dropping in all other groups.

[CK78]

Originally Posted by malamute

It was a reality for many -- my grandfather for example was born semi-poor to a large family with two hard working parents. He was allowed to go to school through 3rd grade and then was needed on the farm - anything beyond learning to read, write and "figure" was seen as luxury but that never stopped him from reading lots of books. He didn't go to college but some of his kids did. Most of his grand children also did. He ended up with a nice home and his own business.

The problem with the American dream is that many decided it had to be a guarantee. EVERYONE had to go to college, even if that meant doing away with college admission standards and providing government money to make sure they could all go even if they didn't feel like working to pay for college.

Many years ago, the American Dream was a dream because you had to work for it, you were also allowed to fail. Not any more -- everyone must have a plush materialistic life today whether they work for it or not. An iPhone for every 5 year old whether the parents work or not.

As absurd as it may sound, a school here gives away a free car for perfect attendance -- not grades. They give away iPads along with free meals just to try to get parents to have their kids show up.

Can you see the irony in what you just wrote?

I agree, the free car thing is insane.

[Roadking2003]

Originally Posted by MTAtech

Lastly, while 19.9% is higher than most pay now, that's only true because we have a screwed up tax system that doesn't raise the money that we need to run the government. 19.9% is far lower than taxes used to be when the economy boomed.

Actually, taxes are way too high. Government doesn't have a revenue problem, it has a BIG GOVERNMENT spending problem by a wide margin.

[CK78]

Originally Posted by Miborn

telemarketing is different than a sales job and it depends on the type of selling is it going onsite cold calls? Is it accounts set up already by the owners? There are many variables and if someone is wanting to work they will but why should they when unemployment can be milked to the very end as so many are doing.

Yep, current reality certainly bears this out.

25% unemployment in Spain and Greece. With massive amounts of sucides in Greece.

24-25 million out of work in the U.S.

The entire system perhaps months away from collapse...

Tent cities all over the U.S. but conveniently out of sight.


But yeah anyone willing to work is, "In like Flynn".

Out of touch much?

[buzzards27]

Originally Posted by Roadking2003

Actually, taxes are way too high. Government doesn't have a revenue problem, it has a BIG GOVERNMENT spending problem by a wide margin.

Don't be silly. You cannot go off to another thread and rant about the out of control debt and come here and say we need lower taxes. It can be one or the other, but not both at once. If the debt is a crisis and it needs to be addressed NOW, taxes need to be RAISED NOW to balance the budget and begin paying down the debt.

There is no way to cut enough spending to balance the budget and pay down the debt, ESPECIALLY with the tax cuts you're supporting.

Budget Simulator | Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget

[swagger]

Originally Posted by freemkt

How does a burger flipper with no money start a company?

You have no vision.

I started my company while unemployed (that means NO income, not "burger flipper" income), and with no savings. I scraped together $1000 over the course of months to get the permits, phones, furniture, etc. necessary to "open the doors," so to speak.

If you want it, you'll figure out a way to make it happen. You have to actually want it, though, not just talk about wanting it.