...

Conveniently ignored in that blurb was Kennedy's tax cuts.

The title is fairly unfortunately worded, given the GOP's reliance on people like McConnell for process and Donald Trump for voter support.

McConnell's modus operandi is literally to stop democracy (by stopping even popular confirmations and bills from reaching the floor) in committee. And as the end of his first term is closing in, Donald Trump is still only willing to act as president for his supporters (which is unfortunate, since he is the president of all US citizens). His enormous list of unlawful and unethical activity while in office is also fairly telling of a party and a conservative political movement that doesn't overly care much for "democracy" (though I'm sure there are individual exceptions).

I'm sure the Democrats are not comprised merely of shining white heroes and you can find many shameful examples of Dem politicians who abandon their duty. Still, anything close to these two when it comes to disregard for democracy is hard to come by in modern US political history. Democracy is far more than an immediate political agenda, political power or election victories.

Not that I think those who want their 3rd conservative judge needs to worry. Two GOP senators coming out early to state their support for delaying the vote, that indicates McConnell is confident he has the votes he needs.

A lot of the number i gave, some start in 1968, others start in 1989....
So i do not really understand your point.

take any date you want, the wealth gap in the US is growing more and more for a very long time and today as reach near 1930 levels...

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/it...lth-2019-02-11

"AmericaÂ’s 1% hasnÂ’t had this much wealth since just before the Great Depression "

"n 1929 — before Wall Street’s crash unleashed the Great Depression — the top 0.1% richest adults’ share of total household wealth was close to 25%, according to Zucman’s paper, which was distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Those rates plunged in the early 1930s and continued dropping to below 10% in the late 1970s, findings show. Rates have been on the rebound since the early 1980s, and are currently close to 20%."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/income-...t-today-shows/

"Income inequality in America is at its highest level in more than 50 years"


I just do not think the 1930 were a great time period , u can disagree and call it great.

I just do not understand how people praise so much the US economy when it clearly show, from any angle you want to see, the economy is not working for half the population, shrug.

I personally cant call a system a success when it benefit solely a minority.

This is why I told you to do it within a vacuum of NBA salaries. Majority of the wealth of NBA players is in the hands of x percent of players. What's the wealth gap between the lowest paid NBA player, and the highest? You really gonna argue that it is unfair and not a a good system because the the lowest paid NBA player who makes a prorata of 900k/yr with probably zero endorsements, and has such a small percentage of wealth of the NBA as a whole? And are the richer NBA players really getting rich off the backs of the poorest NBA players? Even if you factor in owners into the equation, NBA players aren't bad off because of a wide wealth disparity.

Percentage of wealth isn't really indicative of too much, especially when the bottom is high.

then I guess it doesnt matter who you vote for nor what their proclaimed ideologies or policies are. its all just about power man is truly some dorm room pothead stuff.

I dont need to live in one. All I need to do is look at how the people of Russia were treated in the 100 years prior to the Soviet Union. or the people of Cuba during Batista's "regime".

all I really need to do is look at the poverty and living conditions despite the insane amount of wealth, profit, and resources in this country and the forces that created such a situation.

btw, why is always a "Communist regime"? we never call it the regime of Bill Clinton, or the regime of the Republicans or the USA backed murderous regime of Guatamala/Chile/Costa Rica/Iran/Iraq/Afghanistan/East Timor etc etc.

Do the Americans at the bottom of the wealth distribution have positive or negative wealth?

The politicians will push for some legislation that will placate their base to keep the voter-turnout in their party sufficiently high to get re-elected.

It matters who you vote for, but not as much as partisans think it does.

Positive. (If it was negative, I don't think it would be wealth.)

Debt is obligation, usually with an opposing asset. If what you owe is more than the asset is worth, you have negative wealth.

I understand why the loot tends to concentrate at the top plus extra potential star power/endorsements etc--but the rest of the guys do contribute to keeping the level of play higher and probably deserve a better cut imo. Take away those guys and pretty quickly the league would look like globetrotters games just stars running circles around dead wood

relative to what?

Relative to zero

You are playing the same game. Not all people seek wealth, nor really desire, or need it. You need to validate that lack of wealth is intrinsically bad relative to 0. Your question is an attempt to avoid contending with the criticism.

Even in a socialist utopia, wealth generation by lower socioeconomic classes will decrease. There simply won't be a need for it.

I don't know, if the criticism is, "actually the poor are happy being poor", then that seems like a harder lift than saying the poor aren't happy being poor. That seems more obvious.

There are people who live in nice apartments, have nice cars, eat well, have a acceptable amount of disposable income, get cable TV and high speed internet, but don't have wealth, nor do they use their disposable income to generate it. Are they poor? Their wealth really does not seem to really characterize their quality of life or standard of living all that well.

Maybe that's why wealth is not the metric used when determining poverty, but you can try and argue it with your neat little goal post shift.

I'm responding to your post about the wealth of NBA players. If you want to talk about the income of NBA players as an analogy to the income of society that's fine, too.

I was talking about wealth, and you decided to straw man my position, as if I my criticism was about poor people:

Let's reset:

You are playing the same game. Not all people seek wealth, nor really desire, or need it. You need to validate that lack of wealth is intrinsically bad relative to 0. Your question is an attempt to avoid contending with the criticism.

If the people closer to the bottom apparently just don't like money--why is there a need for the top to continually skew the game in their favor? They're apparently the only ones who would be chasing it anyway

Odd that you would use NBA salaries. The whole salary cap system is designed to lower top end salaries and raise bottom end ones. Liberals would love all job salaries to like the nba with a very strong union. Conservatives don’t.

Before I respond, you are talking about money, not wealth, which is the same straw man Hue made.


With that said:

Is it really the people at the top? Let's stick with basketball analogies.

Money is a tool to generate wealth, just a like a basketball is a tool to score points in an NBA game. The goal is for the team to win. Obviously you want the best players to get most of the touches, and the team benefits. If you went with a more equitable distribution of touches, the team is more likely to lose. Winning generates more revenue for everyone on the team.

It does not matter, you can choose pretty much any sport, or profession, for the most part. You will have substantial wealth inequality. Even if you went full blown socialist utopia, wealth at the bottom end would plummet. Also, salaries are not really indicative of wealth either. Like, most NFL players are broke when they leave the league, or with a few years of leaving. Lottery winners follow a similar pattern.

Yeah, just like Norway.

You are missing the point completely. The highest paid NBA players only make like 30 times the lowest by collective bargaining agreements. That’s literally what liberals argue companies should do and conservatives claim can’t be done. It is a dumb example even by your standards.