So much for so called redistribution, Income gap between rich and poor is biggest in a century (wage, ideology)
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Seems a lot of people might feel better about their lots in life, when they can punish the poor for being poor.
That Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 required welfare recipients to work at least 20 hours a week to continue to be eligible for welfare and made the states responsible for enforcement. This was a Republican " feel good" initiative. CATO Institute reported that 80% of the jobs held by welfare recipients were and remain wholly or partially subsidized by government.
While not the objective of this particular report, it demonstrated that the U.S. does not have a sufficient number of entry level, low paying jobs to sustain the masses despite that there has been and continues to be a trend towards part time job since the late 60's and that retail and food services have been the nation's largest private sector employers since the late 80's.
And somehow, we are led to perceive a political party or any president or congressional majority is going to magically turn the tide.
How exactly would you go about ensuring that people move up in SES?
What would you do to ensure that employers paid a living wage?
a "living wage" is market based. if you work at a company making X number of dollars per hour/week/month/year, and you feel you should be getting paid more, or you want to get paid more, then you can either seek to be promoted at your company, find a new job that pays more, or if you like working at the company you are in now, you can seek the new job, get the job offer with more money, and take that to your employer and ask for a raise equal to what the new company would pay you in order to remain at your current job. that is the way the free market works. employers are going to hire the best employees for their company, and to get those employees, they have to pay accordingly. when you force employers to pay a certain minimum wage, then they start everyone in the entry level positions at that wage. and there again, those that want more will work for it, those that dont will complain they dont get enough money, but wont do anything to change their lot.
Some states requested waivers to the work requirement, including one that was involved in the 9/11 attack. More specifically, some states asked to be relieved of the responsibility to document how they met the work requirement.
As an aside, according to a CATO Institute Report, 80 % of those receiving TANF and required to work at least 20 hours a week were employed by government and private sector organizations receiving subsidies. In other words, there are not a sufficient number of low pay, entry level part time jobs to sustain those who need jobs. This is despite a 50 year trend towards more part time jobs and that retail and food services have been the nation's largest employers since the late 80's.
Guess what? That was THE LAW and even the people who wrote the law specifically said that wording was put in their so NO ONE could arbitrarily gut that requirement!
Obama however used semantics to side-step that wording knowing that he couldn't pull it off legally and he wouldn't be able to muster the votes to change the law.
Of course there are plenty of jobs that fit the requirement. That's the real propaganda.
Obama betrayed his fundamental lack of understanding of how things work a few years ago when he made his remarks saying that corporations had lots of money but they were refusing to hire new people. The concept that the reason they weren't willing to invest that money in creating new jobs was because he hadn't created an environment conducive to increased business activity seemed to be lost on him.
His misunderstanding is one shared by many, many liberals. Businesses exist to make profits. They do not exist to benefit their employees.
And here we are a few years later and many large corporations are showing record profits and sitting on piles of cash. They were able to achieve this without hiring or paying more. It's far more productive to invest capital in technology that will eliminate jobs than it is to create new jobs.
Lowering/eliminating corporate taxes is not going to cause business to go on a massive hiring spree. They have already demonstrated the ability to do more with fewer people.
Reagan was President during one of the great times of expansion in American History. Every sector of the economy was lifted. Was it because of his policies? Who knows for sure but you cannot dispute he was President during very good economic times.
a "living wage" is market based. if you work at a company making X number of dollars per hour/week/month/year, and you feel you should be getting paid more, or you want to get paid more, then you can either seek to be promoted at your company, find a new job that pays more, or if you like working at the company you are in now, you can seek the new job, get the job offer with more money, and take that to your employer and ask for a raise equal to what the new company would pay you in order to remain at your current job. that is the way the free market works. employers are going to hire the best employees for their company, and to get those employees, they have to pay accordingly. when you force employers to pay a certain minimum wage, then they start everyone in the entry level positions at that wage. and there again, those that want more will work for it, those that dont will complain they dont get enough money, but wont do anything to change their lot.
Interesting.
I don't see a single thing noted here that would make the income inequality gap attributable in any way to the President.
A question: if companies are not hiring, how exactly does an employee leverage his/herself in such a way to get that increase in pay?
If the job you have is the only job you can get, you're pretty much out of luck, huh?
FDR's first fed chairman equated the depression to a card game.
When everyone first sits down, everyone has money, everyone is betting, and the game is moves along quite well. Sooner or later, one player starts to accumulate enough money from the pot, that they start making larger and larger bets. This slows the game down, and the winner keeps accumulating more and more money. Soon, people start dropping out of the game. Soon to follow, only one person is left with all of the money, and the game stops.
I give you, the depression.
Scary dangerous how close we are to that reality again today.
like there was no homeless problem before reagan, or after his administration. they suddenly appeared during the reagan administration and disappeared during the clinton administration, came back during the bush administration, and disappeared again during the obama administration. get real.
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