Income Inequality Is At An All-Time High: STUDY

Income inequality is a sin? a problem? wrong? how? Why should someone with an education costing 100s of thousands of dollars, doing work that most people wouldn't have the INTELLECT to do, even with the education, be making the same as those who sat down on their butts after high school and started watching television and eating potato chips, with infrequent breaks to go flip burgers? What is this new kind of "justice" that says those who don't exert themselves are entitled to as much recompense as those who work their asses off? That, for those progressives who don't GET it, is what America is about!
PS: tbowman131, that's not what Reagan did. Do your homework before you open your mouth and make a fool of yourself! And millionaires are entitled to keep what they earn. Most of them are first generation rich, and WORKED for their money. Not to mention, the top 1% of taxpayers pay about 85% of tax revenues. I notice you don't mention how much tax revenues "skyrocketed" when Reagan dropped the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28%!

is it just a coincidence that income inequality began skyrocketing in the early 80s, at the same time that Reagan dropped the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics) and increased the FICA tax by 12% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply-side_economics)?

so to all the reagan fans out there, if you aren't a millionaire, why would you be a fan of a man who slashed taxes on millionaires while simultaneously increasing taxes on the middle class?

Obviously the facts always get in the way of these capitalist. When you have had enough of this crap you will hit the streets but the streets will have disappeared from lack of infrastructure and the pot holes alone will consume any one on the street. The fire department won't be around to rescue you because they also will have been lost because we just can't tax the rich. The gangs that are running the streets will have killed anyone who ventures out into this new wilderness because the cops have all quite because of the chaos like they did in katrina. So much for a civilized society it will be survival of the fittest and the rich will be gone to Costa Rico or some place with an army they have paid for. Keep up the slide into turmoil this is going to be better than Quinton Tarratino film.

There is clearly something wrong when some CEOs make more in an hour than many of their employees make in a year. There needs to be a reasonable cap on compensation for the execs. I'm not saying that they don't deserve to be rich. I'm saying that they don't deserve to be stinking filthy rich, while the people that helped them make their fortune are struggling to make ends meet.

It used to be a loathsome thing , unearned income . To make money off of others without producing anything , without contributing yourself . People who inherited wealth would often volunteer , or contribute back to the community they got their wealth from , because of this . I hope we can remember the wisdom of this thinking . If they are too greedy to do it themselves , tax away ...

a ringing DUH seems appropriate here.

tax the rich fuckers. tax them, tax the people who get their wealth, and tax people who make money off of that.

real fact, 5% of the us population owns 50% of the wealth.

TAX NOW!

i actually used this graph to back my argument with my friend about how raging capitalism is bad and how the rich are too rich.

I think the issue comes in more so when you think about who the media is representing. They cater to the wealthy. So when we hear about "economic improvements" they are really referring to the upper class.

So the rest of the country tries to catch up. We buy houses and expensive cars/watches/cloths. All on credit of course, because some part of us feels that if the people on TV are doing it, why can't we?

Unfortunately it's self defeating and in the long term we're only feeding the wealthy.

We need real change in the dynamic of this country. But we are such pacifists it's agonizing to watch.

If the Democratic party acted as aggressively as the Republicans I would respect them more. That sounds off topic, but they are the only ones wiling to tax the wealthy... but they have no spine!

The economy will not rebound to where it needs to be unless the lower to middle class have significant raises in pay or the rich being taxed the hell out of. Speaking of the 50s the upper tax bracket was at 91% after the first 3.4 million and 25% on every thing below that 3.4 million. It kept CEOs in check so they had to reinvest in their own employees and company. CEOs back then stayed with a company for thirty years instead of jumping from one company to another and destroy it's bottom line for investors that only pay 15% sitting around the pool drinking margaritas. When they changed that tax code during the Reagan administration and dropped that investor class rate to 15% thats when it all started to go to shit and the war on the middle class started.

It could be worse...I suppose we could live in Russia, circa 1985....

...we could all be poor and miserable together!

Take a look at that graph.

When was income quality -lowest-? The 1950's.

Guess which decade was one of the greatest for American prosperity?

I'm willing to be there is more than a correlation there.

Remind me... When was NAFTA put in place?