6 horrifying facts about the rich

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I never said there wouldn't be regulation, especially public health regulation. I'm talking about poorly though out regulation aimed at targeting specific business on the basis that those business are bad, rather than well though out laws, promoting an evirment of competition in the market place.

Public health violations should be a criminal matter not civil, there needs to be individual culpability to.

I was also criticizing the idea that regulation alone will bring competition. There is far more to competition that just price, and price, interference is actually not going to help competition.

Some market are so regulated basically all business is done through government say so. That is not competition, that is business vying for government contracts.

Americans/Westerners are terribly unproductive so their wages should stagnate. China and India are able to produce goods tremendously cheaper. Wages in China are$2-$3/hr with few benefits. Their wages are rising, their standard of living is rising, because they are the ones creating wealth.

Actually our productivity has been constantly increasing. More work is being done by fewer workers. Unfortunately, the rewards of that productivity goes to the wealthy betters and not those that create the wealth.
OK,you are arguing that American workers are lazy. Actually that is a lie. Americans have been working harder (2 jobs etc) and are making less.
I just wish we went back to conservative values (work ethic ) and abandon the Republican embrace of the gambling ethic (wall street etc).
Reagan, Eisenhower etc are too far left for today's Republican party!

The reason for the economic collapse under Bush (after only 6 years we are almost out! It took over a decade to get out of the great depression in the 1930s * ) was deregulation.
The banks were deregulated. They were allowed to sell mortgages to investors.
I will use absurdly small numbers to make the math easy to understand.
A bank loans Mr. Homeless bum $10,000 to buy a house at 20% interest. The bank then sells that mortgage to Mr. Average worker. Mr. Average worker buys the mortgage because he is promised a 10% profit. He also feels safe because the mortgage is AAA (another scandal of deregulation ). The bank takes a 10% profit. (20%-10%=10%)
Mr. Homeless bum does not pay up. Mr. Average worker takes a huge financial hit. The bank does not care because it got all its money back plus 10% profit when it sold the mortgage to Mr. Average worker.
The bank continues to sell mortgages to those that cannot repay because it is profitable.
Eventually all those mortgages became due and thats when the bubble burst and we experienced the worse depression since the 1930s.
Deregulation caused our current financial problems.
* Ironically the great depression of the 1930s was due to the unregulated 1920s. I guess we never learn! We were played for fools again by the banks and Wall Street. Which Obama bailed out. I voted for Obama twice. I did not like him (he is hardly a Socialist. He is a friend of Wall Street) but he was the lesser of two evils. Republicans want to turn over our sovereignty to international banks and corporations.

Geez, and I thought conservatives always made themselves out to be loyal Americans. You can't be loyal to the country without loyalty to the people, which includes workers.

The result?
Those that create value (workers both manual and creative) lose and those that do not create anything (those that bet on our productivity ) make a fortune! Did you know that if you sold everything in the US, 400 INDIVIDUALS would own half that huge stack of cash?! !!
Eisenhower and even Reagan would be shocked!

The new Republican ethic (I am not talking about Eisenhower, Reagan etc they were old school Republicans) is personified by Romney. He * bought companies, fired a lot of people,made those that stayed work more for less and took away their pensions. This made the company more profitable. He then sold that company at a profit. Romney created nothing except more unemployment.
* Bain capital was his corporation that made its money by firing good workers.

Yes, it is increasing. However, it doesn't help, because Americans are so abysmally unproductive to start with. It is like being 800 pounds overweight, and losing 10 pounds and acting like you accomplished a lot.

It is self-evident that labor is fantastically more productive pretty much everywhere else in the world. When you can pay a Chinese worker $2/hr to do the same job an American requires $20/hr pay + another $4/hr for Social Security, benefits, regulation, taxes , it is silly to argue Americans are anything resembling productive.

This of course is why America is around 100 million unemployed people.

"Nearly 102 million working-age Americans jobless"
http://rt.com/usa/156800-americans-econ ... oyed-work/

So your argument is that we should be more like Chinese slave labor?
So your argument is that those that produce nothing should be rewarded and those that create the wealth should not be compensated?
Luckily, most Americans believe in freedom and the work ethic.
At least your honest. Most politicians are not that honest. Even Romney would not proclaim his love of sweat shops and hatred for freedom.

Then what do you suggest? That American workers be content to live in third world poverty? I thought the whole idea of capitalism was that we all benefit from it - or at least, that's what you conservatives have been selling the rest of us. Small wonder that more and more people are losing faith in the free market.

Lovenothate,
No, that is silly, there are not so many unemployed because we make survival wages. *You should become more informed. You really do not have a clue about reality. Many live from pay check to pay check and that is not because they are buying luxurys.
The reason (scroll back, I proved it) is because deregulation stole money from those that create value (workers both creative and manual ) and gave it to those that bet on our productivity.
* Your "argument" is that everything would be fine if we made $2 an hour!

BS!!.. Americans are just as productive as anyone else but are not going to work for slave wages. I am tired of 1%ers spewing that garbage in order to justify their own acts of treason against America. This is the reason the 1% run their mouths while they hide behind others like sniveling cowards. It is the 1%ers who eschew this garbage you are parroting who are destroying America, and they do it because they no longer have a sense of honour or patriotism. Their loyalty is not to country, or "God". They are cowardly, undisciplined slaves to money. Let one of them come out in public and spit their nonsense in full view of the American public. Not hiding behind a microphone, or some internet mouthpiece lackey and see how long they survive.

Amen!

America cannot be a bubble shielded from every other nation in the world, and shielded from the billions of people in poverty who would gladly work for very little. To me it is like a physics problem and the solution is easy to see: America is ultimately equalized with the rest of the world. Much of the "prosperity" in America is fake. We borrow huge sums of money, spend it and call it "prosperity", call it "productivity", we call it "GDP". Yet, it's not any of that. The fake America will eventually end.



The evidence is abundant that Americans cannot compete with India/China/Mexico/Central America/Indonesia (where they make our clothes) ... and everywhere ... In India for example you hire a person with PHD in computer science for 5k to 10k /year, and what does an American want? 100k/year ? In the Philippines the average worker makes what $200/month? It is clear that the standard of living in America needs to fall substantially. The government realizes this and they are inflating the money to make labor cheaper.

400 individual Americans own half the wealth of the entire US. Your "argument" also applies to them. If we have to make $2 an hour, they should also. Especially considering that WE contribute to our country's wealth and they do not.

I can hardly wait for the upgrade!! !
I tried to edit the above post and it said I cannot edit until I wait a long time!! !!
In 2009 the wealthiest 1% got 95%of the economic gain and the bottom 90% got poorer!
What does that mean? That if you are in the 90% (those that create the wealth) higher productivity does not effect your life. Your ethics (lovenot hate) is teaching people that working is stupid.