As Income Gap Balloons, Is It Holding Back Growth?

[ShockediSay]

Source: npr

Members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors tend to speak cautiously: Their words can move markets. Yet last month, Fed governor Sarah Bloom Raskin was remarkably candid about the growing gap between America's rich and poor.

"This inequality is destabilizing and undermines the ability of the economy to grow sustainably and efficiently," she said. Income inequality, she continued, "is "anathema to the social progress that is part and parcel of such growth."

The income gap in the United States has ballooned: It's wider than any time since 1928, in the days before the stock market crash triggered the Great Depression.


Read more: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/10/137744694/as-income-gap-balloons-is-it-holding-back-growth#commentBlock

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As long as we are ruled by the Big Corporate Greed Money Selfish Billionaires that don't want to pay their share of taxes, we tank.

[TxVietVet]

1. Our economy is now based on consumerism or that's the way the corporatists want it.

AS the economy is not producing middle class jobs, as jobs leave, as people lose faith in their government, they feel hopeless, the relentless attacks on unions........... it's not going to get better unless the workers organize and take the conservanazi republikans on head-on.

[ShockediSay]

2. Betcha they are finding not enough consumers on account of

not enough money in the hands of the general population.

[Sherman A1]

10. Precisely

[DBoon]

16. Consumerism is so 20th-century

we are now based on cheap labor.

Our standard of living will drop to a level of our 3rd world competitors.

Not by accident, we also see 3rd world levels of income inequality

[Moostache]

18. Can't happen.....too few people already have means to BUY / CONSUME!

The grand plan of a global cabal of rich people holding all the wealth and making the remainder of the planet toil as their slaves has already hit its zenith and is currently unraveling across the globe:

Iceland
Ireland
Greece
Spain
Argentina
Portugal
Italy
UK
USA

These are ALL either economies in chaos or outright default and once the bomb-throwers on the American right get done rolling over Barrack Obama (again) on the debt issue, the metaphorical shit will definitely contact the rotary air moving device!

The simple solution - correct the inequities on the DEMAND side of economics is the one thing that NO ONE on power will even allow to be discussed, let alone considered or implemented. One way or another though, large scale, nationalized and government run infusions of capital are the only way out of this hole. It will either come peacefully like the start of the New Deal (which was thrown off track by early attempts to balance the deficit back then) or violently with wars and massive destruction.

[Trajan]

3. It isnt just about taxes ...

It is about sharing a reasonable amount of the profits with the workers who help produce the products that generate those profits ....

WAGES are key to a successful economy .... Yet conservative economic philosophy has gutted wage development to the point that most middle class families are now struggling to pay their basic expenses ...

Foolish greed ...

[ShockediSay]

4. This is why Germany rebounded so quickly from the recession

[quaker bill]

13. It is about taxes but it isn't about how high or low the rates are

Alterations to the tax code and financial deregulation have combined to make growing a business far less profitable than financial speculation. The theoretical purpose of lowering capital gains rates was so that people could grow businesses and keep the profits from eventually selling them, it has not had this effect. It combined with deregulation of the financial industry has made speculation in utter fantasy (speculation in derivative, and often enough fake instruments for a fantasy based on a fiction) more highly rewarded than the creation of any actual product. Creation of actual products involves wages, financial speculation largely doesn't (except for the small handful of brokers).

If you set up the system so the fastest, most dependable, lowest risk, and most greatly rewarded means to get rich is making businesses that produce products, then this is what people will begin to do. More wages will be the result.

[Trajan]

24. Um .... Isnt this conservative economic theory that you are espousing ?

If I am not mistaken ... The decrease in taxation you espouse has already taken place under the mindful eyes of a two term GOP president and his lackeys in a divided congress ...

Yet, I have to ask you > How is that working for us now ?

After the introduction of low tax/low wage philosophy espoused by the conservative economic braintrust - How has the economy fared since these ideas have been put into place ?

Are you arguing that taxes need to be cut even lower ? .... Isnt that the same argument used by Norquist and his ilk ?

Hmmmm .... Something rings false here .... first comes the tax cuts for the wealthy, then, sometime later, comes reasonable wages for workers ?

IF your argument is that re-regulation needs to be introduced in the markets, and then all will be well for worker wages ..... I have my doubts as to this being the only factor ....

[aquart]

5. Income desparity is destroying growth.

[BadGimp]

6. Professor Obvious says duh!

[Kablooie]

7. Well then fix the problem damn it!

Eliminate taxes for the rich, destroy Social Security, Medicare and unions.
They should have done all this years ago and we wouldn't be in this mess!



:sarcasm: (as always)

[pansypoo53219]

8. let us eat cake

this is how france got their 1st revolution and mostly pissed middleclass.

[JCMach1]

9. Biggest D'oh in economics... must have salary to consume...

Capitalism as we knew it is dying...

[FlaGranny]

11. The country is

in steep decline and I am beginning to feel that it must hit rock bottom before anything changes. Depressing thought. Maybe Michelle Bachmann should have her fantasy so the country can be brought to its knees. Then maybe most of the rest of the country will get it, although I believe that there are 15-20% who never will. It is mind blowing that a middle class or poor person would vote so completely against their own interests.

P.S. We need a New Capitalism (i.e., a well-regulated capitalism), not capitalism run rampant like we have now.

[JCMach1]

12. Socialism and Now Capitalism are both finished because of Globalization

A new system has yet to come into being...

[FlaGranny]

19. What would that be?

Well-regulated capitalism seems to me to work best, but I don't claim to know much. ;)

[Hydra]

23. There's no such thing are "well regulated" capitalism

"Capital cannot abide by a limit"

Put another way, look at unchecked capitalism right now. Poison, wouldn't you say? Poison in controlled doses can be medicine, but it's not food. Not SUSTENANCE.

We need a sustainable and sane system. The "invisible hand" is the one picking your pocket.

[jpak]

14. So why aren't the Holy Moran Job Creators creating any jobs?

:shrug:

[Javaman]

15. We all dance around the topic...

but something bigger is coming down the road.

Within the next 3 to 5 years, unless the rich are taxed, we are certain to enter into a world of serious hurt.

the kind of hurt that will take a very long time to recover from...if ever.

the repukes going against anything Obama does will come back to take a gigantic bite right out of their asses.

one sad day, the repukes will be back in power, whoa be to this nation.

As Al Jolson used to say, "You ain't seen nothin' yet!"

[MilesColtrane]

17. Just noting that Sarah Bloom Raskin is an Obama appointee.

You wouldn't hear this out of Elizabeth A. Duke.

[Enthusiast]

20. Like a fuckin' anchor. nt

[crazylikafox]

21. Well, yeah.. When they're taking their profits & stuffing them into Swiss Bank Accounts.

The rich, instead of creating jobs, are just taking their outsized incomes & profits & sending them offshore. They're skimming off this countries wealth!

[Uncle Joe]

22. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, ShockediSay.

[0rganism]

25. I don't know, let's check the Magic Eight Ball for answers!

Or perhaps we should ask the...
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_wfCCViv_uKk/SvTu8i7URQI/AAAAAAAAAO8/vyGNKedIsrk/s320/master+of+the+obvious.jpg

[buckrogers1965]

26. When we hit rock bottom

We are just going to line up all the rich people and lawyers and bankers against the wall, shoot them and take everything they have. Read a history book. This is what happens.

So we better start sharing now so it doesn't get to that point.