More Good News - Poverty Rate

[gsvol]

Obama Cannot Explain This: [Reader Post] | Flopping Aces

Twenty four centuries ago Socrates argued that the greatest of evils and the only evil worse than doing wrong was getting away with it. Since we experienced the economic near-collapse four years ago, we have also witnessed complete and utter failure in the administration of justice. Senior levels of the Department of Justice, of the banking industry, of the political system, are all “getting away with it.”

Is there any chance that Covington and Burling, the firm which represents JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, B. Of A., Wells Fargo, etc., and spawned AG Eric Holder and AAG Lanny Breuer, might be receiving disdain and a wagging finger from Socrates looking down from wherever he now sits and observes? Where have ethics gone?
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HSBC Holdings this past week made news when it became the subject of allegations that it conducted money-laundering for drug lords, dictators, and thieves, operating in places from Mexico to Saudi Arabia. It didn’t help that the bank provided terrorists with access to U.S. Dollars and the U.S. Financial system.

 

[Volst53]

Hold up...there is a poverty problem here? Worldwide, isn't almost everybody above the poverty line? Hell, $65K a year is the top 1%.

I'd say he's talking American poverty, instead of absolute poverty.

 

[rjd970]

I'd say he's talking American poverty, instead of absolute poverty.

It was tongue and cheek.

In another thread I was talking about the top 1% and he stated somebody making $65K a year is in the top 1% in the world.

 

[Velo Vol]

If you have a refrigerator, you can't be poor.

 

[Volst53]

If you have a refrigerator, you can't be poor.

You can be poor and have a refrigerator, but being poor in America is better than living in poverty in another country.


The average American that would be classified as poor has stuff that kings would have killed for just two hundred years ago.

 

[n_huffhines]

Half the people lived on farms, received very little formal education, and our military complex consisted of chasing Indians off the land.

The correct answer is government was small.

 

[Velo Vol]

The correct answer is government was small.

And life/society was completely different.

 

[n_huffhines]

True in the abstract, so long as productivity gains benefit the entire population.

But now we're producing as much as we did before the recession, with several million fewer workers (productivity!)

How is this benefiting the unemployed?

In the long run productivity gains almost always* benefit the entire population. That doesn't mean benefits are enjoyed equally. Example: if a manufacturing innovation lowers the price of canned food, that disproportionately helps the poor (including the unemployed).

Productivity can conceivably improve to the point where only the people who really want jobs have them, and everybody enjoys a better standard of living than we do today.

*if you made millions as the owner of a typewriter company, then the computer did not make you wealthier. Everybody else (including your employees who lost their jobs) are much better off in the long run.

 

[NEO]

Keep the tax cuts for those making under $250,000, jack that sh** up for those making over $1 million. Hard.

taxing that group only provides additional funds for 8 days worth of government.