Redistribution of Wealth

I meant redistributed in terms of payments to poorer nations, not the normal national income tax.

 

What disparity? Income levels of rich vs poor? You are nearly alone in that belief. Most economists believe the stock market crash (which leveled wealth to a large degree) and the tightening of the money supply were the key factors. Both played major roles in widespread bank failures.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100928/ap_on_bi_ge/us_census_recession_s_impact

.

 

Take a look at the U.S. federal income tax rates over the decades. The tax rate for the wealthy was as high as 90% back in the 40s and 50s and about 50% back in the 80s. Overall, it has gone down significantly in recent decades. The current 30% to 35% for upper income people is low compared with historical figures.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html

.

 

Yes, the rich vs. poor. What I'm saying is this disparity helped cause the crash which led to the depression. In 3 ways.

1. The rich don't spend as much on a percentage of their income so as they recieve more of the pie there's less overall spending and reduced production in the economy.

2. With more wealth going to the top, real wage growth for the middle class stagnates leading to increased personal debt as they try to keep up with the rich. "keeping up with the Joneses"

3. And as more wealth gets concentrated at the top the money get pumped into speculative markets creating huge bubbles aka real estate, tech......that burst.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010...pression-and-the-current-economic-crisis.html

 

Okay, although I don't claim to be very well versed in economic theory, those seem like pretty reasonable arguments to me.

Numbers 1 and 2, though, seems to assume that wealth is finite and results in a zero-sum distribution (i.e. a dollar more to one means a dollar less to another) which I'm pretty sure isn't the case when speaking of income in the macro sense.

Re number 3, the bubble in the great depression was the stock market which caused a loss of value to the rich (and a lot of not-so-rich) thereby reducing the "gap" I presume.

All kind of confusing to me. Was there indeed a large "gap" back then? Kind of before my time.

 

Redistribution of wealth is a joke. It never works and never will.

The wealthy choose what games to play. If the rules are not in our favor we walk away and find a new game.

The new rich have a message to the world.

You have not proven financially or humanely responsible. So we are taking our money away and shopping for governments that do not empower bloodthirsty dictators and corrupt regimes.

We are not interested in underwriting your bombs and missiles and your constant nonstop wars.

You are not the only game in town USA.

I say let the sheep sleep they need the rest for the execution comes soon.

And it is their own damn fault that they did not see it coming.:2thumbsup:

 

Speaking of the U.S. losing its influence:

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticke...fluence-in-the-western-hemisphere-535456.html

.

 

What does this have to do with redistribution of wealth? Lets stay on topic, please.

 

The story may be a bit of documented evidence that the world's wealth is being redistributed anyway... with the United States losing financial weight in the world... and selected other countries being beneficiaries of that trend.

 

Cool! Just goes to show you that I'd make a poor moderator

 

If everyone took there money out of the banks and let them collapse on themselves, did not support corporate companies, and thought very hard about where you put your money the distribution would balance out.

If you take walmart for as one example. A super walmart was built in a smaller maybe 15,000 population place near where i live. Once that went up small business everywhere started going out. Well now you hear people complaining about no jobs, since there really is none there. Well these people continue to buy shit that seems so unnecessary. Honestly do you really need that? Think about where your money is going!!!

Anyways i don't see how anything is going to be solved for a very long time. The general population seems to have forgot that they have the true power. Corporate companies have sold the people out because they can go into a country and pay them 5cents an hour, make billions, and the country buying the product, doesn't seem to mind.

ugh im ranting now....

 

it's not actually 39% of what they make, just 39% of what they make over a certain amount.

for example (these numbers are in no way accurate, just the base concept) someone making $150,000 might pay 20% on the first $100,000 and 39% on the next $50,000.

or something like that, this is really not my area.

 

If everyone took their money out of banks it would actually precipitate economic downfall, the economy is dependent on people being able to get loans to invest. Banks constantly collapsing was one of the problems that made the Great Depression so bad to begin with and why things like the FDIC and numerous regulations were set up, and still rings true today since banks are just sitting on piles of cash given to them.

*edit*
Reminds me of the scene from It's a Wonderful Life during the bank run where George goes "You're thinking of this place all wrong as if I had the money in a safe, the money isn't here, well your money is in Joe's house, that's right next to yours, and the Kennedy house and the Meclan's house and a hundred others. You're lending them the money to build and they're paying back as best they can, what are you going to do foreclose on them?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu2uJWSZkck"]YouTube - The Bank run

*hint, the big banks will foreclose on you*

 

Yeah, the gap was big back then and there were many other similarities like stagnation of real wage growth. Here's a chart that shows the gap from the link I posted.

 

Another article that I forgot to post.

http://www.stwr.org/poverty-inequality/world-now-has-10-million-millionaires-report-says.html

The disparity in the distribution of wealth is becoming mind-boggling. Some people refer to it as the 'L-curve.'

Excerpt:

"To get a glimpse of this broader context, we have to go back to December 2006 when the United Nations University’s World Institute for Development Economics Research estimated the total household wealth of the world at $125.3 trillion, as of the year 2000.

Half the world’s 3.7 billion adults, at that time, had less than $2,161 to their name, the Institute reported. The richest 1 percent of these 3.7 billion — those worth at least $514,512 — then held 39.9 percent of the world's wealth all by themselves, 13,000 times more than the entire bottom 10 percent."

.