Top 1% 'richer than rest of world'
 

Is it time for a revolution?

I think so.

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A quiet revolution, hopefully. The nosier a revolution is, the worse it turns out, for the most part....

Wages need to go up and continue to do so in order to create a larger market of consumers. Private companies will not do it simply because their competition will hold back to keep their prices lower. So this needs to be mandated by the government. And who is going to do this? The GOP, never. The Dems? They are too close to WS.

So a revolution is needed but what is this going to look like? Not a clue.

Do you suppose the timing of this news story is coincidental to Obama's SOTU message about a tax increase on the "wealthy"?

Naaahhh! Couldn't be.

Sure, it could be. Would that make it untrue?

John

This type of analysis presumes that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the nation/world (i.e., that wealth distribution is a zero-sum game) and that one's ability to make money or acquire wealth automatically inhibits another's capacity to do so. AFAIK, Bill Gates never inhibited my ability to make a good living. Furthermore, Bill Gates employed thousands of people and made a bunch of them wealthy. What's wrong with that?

This is not to say I don't support changes in the tax code aimed at higher effective rates for the wealthy, but I'm not sure it will have any real impact on the wealth distribution described in the OP. In a nutshell, I support taxing earned and unearned income equally, something the GOP (and their wealthy patrons) insist will kill the economy. It never has and never will.

Nevertheless, the Waltons inhibit the ability of their employees to earn a living wage while, in the aggregate, becoming the richest person in the world.

See above, re: the Walton family.

John

I support a higher minimum wage, indexed to inflation such that we don't have it as a perennial argument. That said, the wages paid to their employees isn't what created Walton's wealth. It has to do with the number of people who shop there, the efficiency of their inventory system, and their ability to pressure suppliers to keep prices down.

More proof that you are a closet bagger.

When are you going to man up and come out Finn?

I never said it was but their policies are calculated to keep the bulk of their employees in penurious circumstances and essentially force the taxpayers into the position of subsidizing Wal-Mart's personnel expense.

John

There are hundreds of businesses who pay essentially the same as Walmart who go bankrupt every year. There's a lot more to Walmart's profitability than paying low wages. I said I support an increase in the minimum wage, indexed for inflation such that it isn't a big argument every year to have wages keep up with the cost-of-living.

I'm far less of a Bagger than you are an idiot blowhard.

The extent of your defensiveness shows that I am hitting pretty close to the mark.

No, it shows only that you're an idiotic blowhard, though that's been apparent for months.

True.........

Unless, of course, the reason why gap continues to expand is because all too many of the "job creaters" have deliberately stopped creating jobs that any but a handful can actually live on, purely for the purpose of further expanding their own personal wealth. That changes everything...........

Does it not?

Dave

A better first step might be to keep the current minimum wage where it is and adjust it upwards based on the cost-of-living where these low pay jobs are. For example, the minimum wage in DC would be higher than in Dallas. Though this would open another can of worms.

The problem is that keeping the current minimum wage in place the keeps people forced to live on it in poverty. Indexing the current minimum wage to inflation can at best keep those people from falling deeper into poverty but would probably only succeed in slowing the rate at which they fell farther down the economic scale: a down escalator rather than a cliff.

John

Yeah, but every little bit helps.

I have always maintained that if you can only do one thing to help the poor then that one thing should be universal single payer health care. And if you can only do two then add free higher education. And don't tell me we can't afford it. If Cuba can, we sure as Hell can.

Tom it has never been a question of affordability we simply have been brainwashed to believe that doing such things is anti American.

Folks who claim such is so************************m don't understand the definition of the word.

Socia!ism is exactly what it is and there's not a damn thing wrong with it.

John

Other than it has proven itself not to work. I'm very much OK with social democracy, not so much with soc!alism.

Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree. I prefer to use the exclamation point in place of the "l".

As you say, pure socia!ism doesn't work and social democracies do. That doesn't negate the fact that socialized medicine programs are inspired by and organized according to socia!ist principles and that they can and often do work. Equally, it's undeniable that for-profit health care and insurance does not. When providing the right type and level of care or insurance coverage is first examined on the basis of it's effect on the bottom line, we have a problem.

John

Whenever an authoritarian dictatorship with a so************************t system fails the failure is erroneously attributed to so************************m.

However it's authoritarian dictatorships that don't work.

So************************m works just fine with a democratic form of government.

I agree completely with the idea of single-payer health insurance, though it actually doesn't really adhere that strongly to soc!alist principles IMO (i.e., doctors, hospitals and labs don't work for the state or a publicly owned collective). In fact, if there's any hope for a single-payer system, trying to sell it as inspired by soc!alist principles is a sure-fire way to ensure it never happens.

They do in the UK.

And that would be the system I would prefer.

Actually, in some of socialized medical systems, doctors do indeed work for the government. There's the VA, Military Health System and Britain's National Health Service where some doctors work directly for the gummint. Other systems, like "single payer" are quasi socializt because, though private doctors and non-government hospitals provide the care, the government sets standards for that care and pays the bills.

It's one thing to have a system of socialized medicine and another to sell it as such. We can quibble about how socializt is socializt but the ethos behind all such systems is decidedly socializt in nature.

John

How is cost of treatment determined under a single payer system, by each practicing physician and hospital, or by the single payer? Removing the insurance companies will significantly reduce costs, but health care is basically an inelastic demand in that if one needs a surgery to stay alive one will pay whatever the market will bear. Hospitals have gone corporate as have physicians, won't the drive to maximize profit remain?

As things are now, payments are made on the basis of what the insurer considers "usual and customary". I can only think that payments made by a single payer would adhere to a similar standard. I think too that, since the profit motive wouldn't be operating in single payer, there would be less of a tendency for the payer to refuse to cover more effective but more expensive procedures, medications, protocols, etc.

John

As John noted it is set atr what is considered normal average for the procedure. What you must know is that Single Payer is in effect the insurer of resort, nothing else changed from the days of private insurers. Oh except that SP negotiates the prices of prescription drugs. I had my choice of doctors and the nearest hospital was a ten minute drive away. Since SP is managed by civil servants there is no seven figure CEQ.

"Chief Executive Quack"?

John

Thanks merrylander. I see single payer as 1) Medicare for all (a good idea) and ACA is a step to this end, and 2) nationalization of the health care insurance sector of our health care industry. However the main driver of our inflated health care cost will remain - the health providers will still be Capitalists. I can't remember his name, but an Irish rabble rouser one said something like this - I don't mind giving Capitalists one of my hands, but do they really need all of my limbs.

Well here is a little anecdote to show how hospitals et. al. are kept in line. A group of doctors in Alberta wanted an MRI machine and so they asked SP for one. The response was "We are not in the business of providing medical devices we are an insurer. If you believe you can find enough usage to pay for an MRI machine then buy one."

Of course Alberta is the home of the Reform party (Really a bunch of wannabee Republicans) so it was not surprising that they mistook SP for Soci@list medicine.

I agree with the revolution part. Richard Wolff like Thomas Paine understood the Monarchy, understands capitalism.

Revolutions rarely end up where the initiators intend.