The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

But Harry J. Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University, argues much of the recent growth at the top reflects insider privilege instead of real productivity. “The notion that the really high earners are earning it has become very questionable,” he said. “Look at outrageousness of the damage they imposed on the rest of the economy and the cost being born by middle-income Americans.”  “There’s been rising income inequality all over the world, but nowhere as much as in the United States,” he said.

You need to read the full article Gasp. The drop in income for the rich was largely due to the stock market crash, which happened when Bush was president. Stocks are up under Obama and the article states they also think the income of the wealthy increased during 2010 and since. Under Obama.

This is also a quote from the article:

Again, if a writer conflates income and wealth, you can pretty much ignore the rest because the conclusions are based on that bit of bunkum.

I'm not conflating anything.  that's not the subject of this post, not do I give a rat's a$$ about it.

As a follow up I just heard that OWS here in Tulsa is chained to City Hall, chanting about fairness this morning.

I bet this galls you, Gassie.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45657166/ns/today-today_celebrates_2011/t/time-magazine-reveals-its-person-year/#.TuigCFbcOVo

(http://msnbcmedia4.msn.com/j/TODAY/Sections/Today%20SPECIAL%20SERIES/2011/2011_TODAYCelebrates/POY.Final.cover3[1].grid-6x2.jpg)

So what's the problem with fairness?  As a campaign theme and as an economic idea it has a long and respectable history in American politics.  Presidents beginning with TR (an, ahem, Republican) have championed "a fair shake" for more than a century.  

And TR, as progressive as he was, was certainly no Commie.  Was he, Gaspar?  

EDIT: and lest we forget, there're plenty of good verifiable, measurable reasons to think that our economic system, as it stands, is unfair.

Income disparity during times of economic growth are typically when the subject of fairness arises as a contentious divider between those amassing wealth and those who are not.  It's an excellent footing to build a push for more social programs to be funded by those who are producing, and awarded to those who are producing votes.

In an economic contraction like the one we are in now, where the incumbent President has spent trillions in tax payer money bailing out the ultra-rich, and engaging in stimulus grants that most of the private sector will never have access to, it becomes rather whimsical that he would then adopt "Fairness" as a theme to continue his policies.

To his credit, he is courting a different base than he had in the first election.  I'm not sure if that is because his base has changed, or because he has changed his base, but the young, ambitious, liberal base he had in 2008 has been replaced with the hordes of hopeless we see him courting at OWS.

I'm not sure how wise it is to replace Hope, with Fairness.  To me that seems like a downgrade of his original message, but at least fairness is a tangible concept.  "Somebody has something that you do not.  Vote for me and I will make them give it to you."  Very visceral, and very easy to understand.

Just for you Tea.

(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7142/6511233183_30a4dfd80f.jpg)

Conan,
Here are classic examples of doublespeak from Gaspar in the first post and in one just a few above this.  He gets it and uses it perfectly.  Say one thing that is either the direct opposite of what you mean, or even better, if it is the direct opposite of reality.


It has already begun, but be prepared to hear it a lot more during this election.  The president does not have a track record with the economy, jobs, foreign relations, domestic relations, or growth, so it is expected that his entire platform will revolve round his new theme of "Fairness."  With OWS as his brownshirts and a slew of new graphic design, monikers, posters, and effigies, he will push the concept of redistribution and fairness as his primary platform.  According to the New York Times, this is his road to success, and as long as people remain unemployed this will resonate with them.


This doublespeak event really starts up strongly with the comment about no track record.  There is actually a pretty significant amount of track record, mostly in the first two years of his term - most of it surprisingly better than not.  This was detailed in depth in a post Nathan made quite a while ago.  Calling OWS brownshirts is a little sideline exercise, where he takes the characteristics of the group he is promoting in the background and ascribes it to the opponent.


In an economic contraction like the one we are in now, where the incumbent President has spent trillions in tax payer money bailing out the ultra-rich, and engaging in stimulus grants that most of the private sector will never have access to, it becomes rather whimsical that he would then adopt "Fairness" as a theme to continue his policies.

In this one, we see how he uses the comment of being in an economic contraction, trying to get an implied agreement to that first false premise so that his follow on comments are just automatically accepted, since they follow that first falsehood.  This President in actuality did NOT spend trillions in taxpayer money bailing out the rich - it was in fact his predecessor that did exactly that.

Wow!  That's a lot of analysis to explain a simple observation.  I am either brilliant, or you are attempting to over-analyze reality to justify your own interpretation of President Obama's performance.

If you think he has done such an excellent job, than woe be it from me to steal your cheese.   I remember a rather positive thread from three years ago where we asked everyone to be non-partisan and express what their hopes for President Obama were beyond whether they supported him in the election or not.  I would be very interested in making that comparison from the "Hope" of 2008 to the reality of 2011.

In this one, we see how he uses the comment of being in an economic contraction, trying to get an implied agreement to that first false premise so that his follow on comments are just automatically accepted, since they follow that first falsehood.  This President in actuality did NOT spend trillions in taxpayer money bailing out the rich - it was in fact his predecessor that did exactly that.

In all fairness, neither of them spent trillions of taxpayer dollars bailing out the rich. One could argue that the Fed did that, but even that's a distortion of the record.

It was all George Bush wasn't it?

Now almost 25% of Americans are in poverty or are low income.

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/15/9461848-dismal-prospects-1-in-2-americans-are-now-poor-or-low-income

If you don't see that as a huge problem, you are just plain stupid. Income inequality in the US is the worst in the developed world.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/08/news/economy/global_income_inequality/index.htm

We rank alongside countries like China and Sri Lanka, not Canada or Europe, that's very bad.

Now almost 25% of Americans are in poverty or are low income.

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/15/9461848-dismal-prospects-1-in-2-americans-are-now-poor-or-low-income

If you don't see that as a huge problem, you are just plain stupid. Income inequality in the US is the worst in the developed world.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/08/news/economy/global_income_inequality/index.htm

We rank alongside countries like China and Sri Lanka, not Canada or Europe, that's very bad.

I read this problem stated over and over again.  What do you propose as a solution to this?

Education would be a good start.  That's a broad stroke but it seems pretty obvious to me.

Education would be a good start.  That's a broad stroke but it seems pretty obvious to me.

Our accounting for poverty is wrong!  It is based on income only. As I've mentioned before, my parents are living in poverty, because the distribution they take from their retirement is about equal to their mortgage plus the minimum they can get by with, without additional tax penalties. In fact, most of the members of my father's country club would probably qualify as well under the poverty line, because they spend far more than their income.

And 1 out of 2 is closer to 50% than 25%.

Great what solutions do you have for that other than higher taxes on the 1% which would do absolutely nothing to change the poverty line, nor the number of people living below it.

I repeat - again;

Fixing the mess of our fiscal voyeurism will require both cuts (as in spending less) AND increased taxes (as increased revenue).  And I have ALSO stated over and over and over and over again, that as much as I hate increasing taxes, I will take that hit for the sake of my kids, grandkids, and now great grandkids, AND the future of this country.

I'm sorry.  How exactly does that fix the income disparity gap?

Oh, and I agree with your first sentence.  We need to spend less and I have no problem paying more in taxes to right the ship so long as there are commensurate spending cuts.  But it still does nothing to narrow the dreaded income gap, all it does is move us toward getting out of debt.  And in case you aren't a good student of John Maynard Keynes' work, cutting government spending is NOT a solution to decreasing the income gap.

Fix income disparity - well first, stop making the rest of the taxpayers subsidize the 1%ers.  When Abercrombie and Fitch CEO gets $125,000,000 income by ISO, that means he pays $15,000,000 instead of about $33,000,000.  Leaving $18,000,000 in taxes to be paid by everyone else.  You.  And me.  

Add to that the fact that A & F gets a tax deduction for that ridiculous money paid to a guy who was in charge when they reported income of $250,000 for the year - it means they dodged paying taxes on what would have been and should have been income of $125,000,000.  Meaning an additional tax loss to be made up by you and me to the tune of about another $35,000,000.

So we get stuck with paying that extra 18 + 35 =  $53,000,000.

So, eliminate the corporate deduction for all ISO plans.  That way, even if A & F CEO gets to keep the obscene 15% tax rate, the corporate tax will at least be paid on income it makes, so we don't have to subsidize quite so much of that guys raping and pillaging of the economy.

Sorry, that still doesn't change the income condition of the poor.  They pay no income tax to start with so they aren't subsidizing the wealthy and the corporations.

Sorry, that still doesn't change the income condition of the poor.  They pay no income tax to start with so they aren't subsidizing the wealthy and the corporations.

Our accounting for poverty is wrong!  It is based on income only. As I've mentioned before, my parents are living in poverty, because the distribution they take from their retirement is about equal to their mortgage plus the minimum they can get by with, without additional tax penalties. In fact, most of the members of my father's country club would probably qualify as well under the poverty line, because they spend far more than their income.

Absolutely it would - makes the economy work so all those little boats will rise with the tide.

An improved economy does more to fix the situation for the poor than just about anything we can do short of fixing the education system and helping to stabilize poor kids' home life. (when you're worried about your next meal or the violence in the streets outside or you're taking care of your three siblings, you're not going to have much time to concentrate on your school work) IMO, welfare isn't so much about helping out the parents, although that's a great thing to do, but it helps out the kids. If the playing field were level, an average-performing poor black kid from the inner city would have the same chance of skating through life as an average-performing middle or upper class white kid. Generational poverty can only be attacked by providing opportunity for poor kids instead of providing the warehousing (in the form of schools and prisons) we are today.

Of course, to make that sort of program effective, we also need jobs. Jobs (and profits) come from investment (real investment, not speculation), which we're seeing little of right now.

All that said, our deficit spending on food stamps and other assistance programs is keeping some 30 million people out of poverty at the moment. (that's a vague recollection, the exact number may be different, but I don't have time to look it up right now) It's a band-aid, but it's better than nothing.

I've come to realize we can either spend money on education and support or we can spend it on prisons, but it's getting spent either way.

Please explain the steps of how this works.

By your notion, you take more money from the wealthy and corporations in the form of higher taxes.  That is money they can no longer spend on a new yacht, improvements on their home in the Hamptons or penthouse on Manhattan, or a corporate jet a company cannot buy or jobs a company cannot make payroll for... all things which necessarily create jobs for others in the economy.

As well, you said the government would spend less money.  So I'm to assume the higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations will do little more than cut deficit spending so we don't have to borrow as much for the government to operate or physically pay down debt.  Neither thing increases the average income of middle class America.

So, you've taken money away from those who could spend in the economy and instead used it to pay down debt.  That doesn't create a single job nor raise wages for everyone else.

I'm not trying to be obstinate, based on simple math, your premise doesn't create a single job nor raise wages.

If I'm missing something, please explain the economic and mathematical gymnastics because it's not readily apparent to me.

Ok, how about this, 20% of children live in poverty. Not including low income, Poverty.

By your notion, you take more money from the wealthy and corporations in the form of higher taxes.  That is money they can no longer spend on a new yacht, improvements on their home in the Hamptons or penthouse on Manhattan, or a corporate jet a company cannot buy or jobs a company cannot make payroll for... all things which necessarily create jobs for others in the economy.

As well, you said the government would spend less money.  So I'm to assume the higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations will do little more than cut deficit spending so we don't have to borrow as much for the government to operate or physically pay down debt.  Neither thing increases the average income of middle class America.

So, you've taken money away from those who could spend in the economy and instead used it to pay down debt.  That doesn't create a single job nor raise wages for everyone else.

I'm not trying to be obstinate, based on simple math, your premise doesn't create a single job nor raise wages.

If I'm missing something, please explain the economic and mathematical gymnastics because it's not readily apparent to me.

Now, borrowing on your premise of real investment vs. speculation, if higher taxes created a better incentive for companies and wealthy executives to create more jobs to try and avoid as much tax as possible then taxes can (in a roundabout way) serve to create more jobs.

.

And finally, your second paragraph shows you have a very limited understanding of the mechanism of Reaganomics.

As is shown by the fact that the Reagan boom of the 80s, which is dragged out at intervals as the prime example of "good times" was a time when the incremental tax rate was 75% for 3/4 of his term. 

In that vein, I think taxes on investments held less than a year probably ought to be higher. One would hope we could funnel some of that money toward education and programs to ameliorate poverty. At the same time, you can't make the tax too high, because you don't want to reduce market liquidity too much.

Really what would be an immediate jolt to the economy would be a comprehensive energy policy which would reduce motor fuels to the $2.00 to $2.50 a gallon.  That would instantly put more money in the hands of consumers while not reducing tax revenues on fuels.  That policy needs to be free of gimmicks and preferred treatment of certain types of energy which offer very low return while requiring a high rate of subsidies.

And finally, your second paragraph shows you have a very limited understanding of the mechanism of Reaganomics.

Really what would be an immediate jolt to the economy would be a comprehensive energy policy which would reduce motor fuels to the $2.00 to $2.50 a gallon.  That would instantly put more money in the hands of consumers while not reducing tax revenues on fuels.  That policy needs to be free of gimmicks and preferred treatment of certain types of energy which offer very low return while requiring a high rate of subsidies.

Increase the minimum wage to a living wage

Require that all employers pay into some sort of minimum retirement plan for workers, even for part time workers. Make current retirement plans more portable and less accessible by the employees. End things like “401k Loans”.

Make corporate boards and execs more accountable to non-instutional shareholders. Change the culture that a CEO is worth hundreds of times more than other workers. The CEO (in most cases) is not the owner and pay that disparate is a disservice to both employee and shareholder

Create a single payer national health care system, get out of the employer insurance system. Pay for this by closing loop holes in the corporate tax system. The net to companies should be overall should be zero since they won’t be paying employees health care costs any longers. Companies with lots of US workers should actually save money. Companies with lots of foreign workers or companies that don’t cover employees will pay more, this will encourage more US based employees and make sure that all Americans are covered. Additionally, like what most of the world does we should lower healthcare costs by mandating healthcare costs and tying payments more to outcomes than counts of procedures. Stop bankrupting people for healthcare costs.

Toughen rules regulating layoffs, employers laying people off need to take more responsibility for impacted employees. Encourage employers to repurpose employees rather than highing in one place while laying off in another.

Rework the corporate tax code providing penalties for moving jobs overseas instead of incentives

Simplify the corporate tax code, maybe institute a VAT at least partially in its place in order to lessen the tax cost on small businesses and make it harder for large companies to avoid taxes.

Remove “goodwill” writeoffs, make any writeoffs be more tangible.

Require that goods produced overseas and imported to the US meet US standards for safety and quality, for workers too. No sweatshop goods allowed.

We spend as much as the rest of the world combined on defense spending. This is insane. Cut defense spending in half and devote that money into more research and education

Increase teacher pay and teacher quality. Develop a multi track national education system instead of trying to pigeon hole all students into a pre college system.  Teach higher level math at younger ages, teach more science

Make education more socially important nationally, stop promoting politics and religion over science

Make sex education real and make it really required. Make contraceptives easily obtained and create a culture where we are more adult about sex and its consequences.

Make housing more affordable nationally. Stop creating inner city public housing ghettos and move public housing to peripheral areas of cities and link those developments to inner city jobs and services via dedicated mass transit. This will encourage more inner city growth, less inner city crime and over time lessen sprawl. This in turn will make cities cheaper to run.

Lower crime rates and decrease prison populations with shorter and more reasonable prison terms. Dedicate the saving to better police protection, especially in high crime areas. Crimes are less likely to be committed when potential perpetrators know they are likely to be caught

Legalize and tax marijuana and other low level drugs, do a better job keeping it out of the hands of kids. My high school student says that drugs are far easier to get than beer.

The American and French Revolutions would be opposite examples. They pretty effectively flattened out income distribution from "The royalty and their cronies have it all" back to the underclasses.

Feel free to debate, but in my view, energy policy won't do a damn bit of good for years at the least. Why? It's the demand, stupid. (thanks to Bill for the original) The only way to get the price of gas down is to dramatically increase supply or dramatically reduce demand. Being complete assholes in our economic policy could do the trick by putting Europe further in the crapper and forcing petroleum demand down in the BRIC countries. Short of that, we have to rejigger our economic engine to use less petroleum-based fuel.

IMO, one of the important first steps is getting long distance truck hauling gone like yesterday. Not only because it uses far more fuel to transport a ton of goods a mile in a truck than it does on a train, but because it has the follow-on effect of significantly reducing damage to our roads, and therefore our maintenance expenses, not to mention the fuel used in that maintenance. One fully loaded truck uses as much pavement life as somewhere around a hundred passenger cars.

How would you use energy policy to get fuel prices down in the relatively short term? A Keynesian might suggest subsidizing the price of fuel for individuals, so as to free up consumers to engage in more discretionary spending, but I think all that will do is delay the necessary transition away from oil to a less scarce resource, which is the only non-band-aid solution. Remember that drilling more doesn't increase supply very quickly these days, since we've tapped out most of the fields that produce quickly without help and forcing production generally ends up leaving more oil in the ground unrecoverable at the end. (as I understand it, anyway)

On education, I agree that it's important to spend the money wisely. However, I disagree that we're wasting as much as you think. Why? Deferred maintenance. As I'm sure you're aware, waiting to perform maintenance until a building and/or its equipment has already failed is far more expensive than keeping it up in the first place. From the 70s to about the 90s, schools have been constantly squeezed as their costs increase in excess of inflation. Public schools are particularly hamstrung relative to private schools by the 1977 federal edict requiring that special needs kids be educated by public schools. Prior to that they could tell the troublemakers to F off. I'm not saying that the requirement is a bad thing, mind you, but it accounts for a surprisingly large amount of spending by school districts. Money that could have gone to maintaining and/or refreshing existing PP&E.

Studies consistently show that kids learn more when they're in a nicer environment. You're probably right that much money is spent on construction just because the contractor is the superintendent's brother or something, but we can't throw the baby out with the bath water. If we actually maintain what we have, the older buildings can still be nice, and with retrofits, even be nearly as energy efficient as a new building.

Increase the minimum wage to a living wage
I like our receptionist, but I suppose we could go ahead and use the auto-attendent on our phone system. She will have to find another job.  She's great, perhaps she can go back to school and get her degree.

Require that all employers pay into some sort of minimum retirement plan for workers, even for part time workers. Make current retirement plans more portable and less accessible by the employees. End things like “401k Loans”.
We will just start to require our employees to empty their own trash and vacuum their own offices once a week.  Can't afford to create a retirement plan for Keim our part-time housekeeper, and can't afford to pay him more than $12/hr.  He will have to find another job.

Make corporate boards and execs more accountable to non-instutional shareholders. Change the culture that a CEO is worth hundreds of times more than other workers. The CEO (in most cases) is not the owner and pay that disparate is a disservice to both employee and shareholder.
Since this is a free market, I suppose if you are going to dictate wages at the low end, and wages at the top end, you might as well just dictate all wages, because that will be necessary to be "fair" don't you think?

 Create a single payer national health care system, get out of the employer insurance system. Pay for this by closing loop holes in the corporate tax system. The net to companies should be overall should be zero since they won’t be paying employees health care costs any longers. Companies with lots of US workers should actually save money. Companies with lots of foreign workers or companies that don’t cover employees will pay more, this will encourage more US based employees and make sure that all Americans are covered. Additionally, like what most of the world does we should lower healthcare costs by mandating healthcare costs and tying payments more to outcomes than counts of procedures. Stop bankrupting people for healthcare costs.
Hey, we've come far enough in medical care/research/technology. Like other countries, it will be necessary to regulate care, we can't have Nanna paying for an expensive new drug just because she can afford it.  Heck, there wouldn't be any expensive new drugs, why do the work when there is no reward?

I agree that employers should be out of the insurance business.  We could do this easily by dropping the cost of medical insurance so that people could afford and shop it.  Just eliminate the rules that prevent you and I from buying our insurance from competing companies.

Toughen rules regulating layoffs, employers laying people off need to take more responsibility for impacted employees. Encourage employers to repurpose employees rather than highing in one place while laying off in another.
Yet another reason to be very cautious about hiring.  Under this law I would certainly want to minimize my workforce.  To avoid liability it would be wise for me to be more selective when interviewing people to make sure that they don't have previous lay-off situation on their resume.  Wouldn't want to hire any trouble-makers.

Rework the corporate tax code providing penalties for moving jobs overseas instead of incentives.
Perhaps just semantics, but why wouldn't you just want to provide incentives for keeping jobs here, and make it more expensive to move jobs elsewhere?  Oh, yeah, forgot about all of the above regulations.  Never mind.  Penalties would have to be pretty stiff to overcome the costs added above.  Perhaps just close the borders all together! That should do it.

Simplify the corporate tax code, maybe institute a VAT at least partially in its place in order to lessen the tax cost on small businesses and make it harder for large companies to avoid taxes.
What would the threshold be?  $2 million?  $10 million?  Less?  How would you simplify the code?

Remove “goodwill” writeoffs, make any writeoffs be more tangible.
Why not eliminate write-offs all together?

Require that goods produced overseas and imported to the US meet US standards for safety and quality, for workers too. No sweatshop goods allowed.
So, we police labor in other countries too?  Would they be required to meet the same labor standards we have here?  Certainly would yank a knot in Apple's tale!

We spend as much as the rest of the world combined on defense spending. This is insane. Cut defense spending in half and devote that money into more research and education.
Not a bad idea.  Not sure about the #.  To just say "Cut in half" is irresponsible.  I would like to see some research to determine what is necessary to keep us ahead of every other country first.  Perhaps the cut could be 75% or 33%.

Increase teacher pay and teacher quality. Develop a multi track national education system instead of trying to pigeon hole all students into a pre college system
Teach higher level math at younger ages, teach more science.
Agreed!  Get rid of education programs where children are forced into failing school, and forced to learn curriculum that does not fit with their goals, skills, and potential.  Give them the freedom to choose what school, and what program best fits their needs.  Stop spending $8,800 a year to provide nothing more than daycare with metal-detectors.  Can't wait to get a statement that says "Mr. Gaspar the education voucher total for your daughter is $9,000 this year.  Please present this voucher to the school of your choice with your child's enrollment documents.

Make education more socially important nationally, stop promoting politics and religion over science.
Who the hell are you to decide what everyone has to learn?  Schools need to provide a balanced base curriculum, and nurture the talents of each student. If my son wants to sing and paint, and my daughter is thrilled by science and history, then I want their education to nurture those talents. Politics and Religion are a very important part of society.  I want my kids to learn about all religions and to have a complete understanding of all forms of government and the political philosophies behind each.  History is politics and religion and the mistakes and successes of both are unbelievably important in learning how not to repeat the ills of the past.  Sure, it's harder to push a Socialist agenda if the young have an understanding of history, but we are not a Socialist country.

Make sex education real and make it really required. Make contraceptives easily obtained and create a culture where we are more adult about sex and its consequences.
Hey, I'm good with that!

Make housing more affordable nationally. Stop creating inner city public housing ghettos and move public housing to peripheral areas of cities and link those developments to inner city jobs and services via dedicated mass transit. This will encourage more inner city growth, less inner city crime and over time lessen sprawl. This in turn will make cities cheaper to run.
Social engineering experiment, not worth addressing.  People should have the freedom to live where they want, and based on what they can afford. Bussing people around to satisfy some secret desire to get the riffraff out of downtown so that developers will build new shiny glass buildings is not smart.  Never has been.

Lower crime rates and decrease prison populations with shorter and more reasonable prison terms. Dedicate the saving to better police protection, especially in high crime areas. Crimes are less likely to be committed when potential perpetrators know they are likely to be caught.
Agree!

Legalize and tax marijuana and other low level drugs, do a better job keeping it out of the hands of kids. My high school student says that drugs are far easier to get than beer.
No argument there.  In fact, legalize all drugs. This would solve so many problems, and only take a couple of generation to do so.  

Are you proposing that we give the French Revolution treatment to our CEOs and top elected officials?

...but because it has the follow-on effect of significantly reducing damage to our roads, and therefore our maintenance expenses, not to mention the fuel used in that maintenance. One fully loaded truck uses as much pavement life as somewhere around a hundred passenger cars.

Agreed on the point on nicer environment.  I'm not so concerned about cronyism, more along the lines of spending money on ancillary facilities that really are not a necessity to learning progress.  I also think the emphasis on lower student to teacher ratios on the high school level is a complete waste of money.  Considering that college-bound students will eventually face that dreaded auditorium class, they need to get weaned off the desired 15:1 to 20:1 ratio.  I really don't think 30:1 at the high school level is a problem.  On the elementary level, yes, that is a problem as at earlier ages, children need more interface in their learning.

Why is high executive pay necessarily a disservice to the employees?  Don't you want the best CEO money can buy to lead the company through smooth and tricky economies?  Don't you want someone who is an innovator and extremely creative?  Considering the culture that Steve Jobs fostered at Apple, the thousands of jobs his ideas created, as well as his overall contribution to modern technology do you think he should have had his pay capped?

That just points to the corruption in road building and the lack of maintenance.  The US interstate system should be built to about a 140 to 150,000 lb traffic rating (can't remember the exact number).  And we can see from the Turner and Will Rogers that is not even close to how they are built.  It would require more than about 8" of asphalt - gravel road with a tasty oil sauce!

It's more of an issue of the involvement of the parents and the discipline they instill in their kids.  I remember classes being on the order of 30 all the way from first grade.  My first grade teacher would take a small group of say 10 kids for reading to an area of the room for that while assigning the remainder of the kids something like coloring with crayons.  One assignment was to color a squirrel.  The teacher said to color it any color you wanted.  I colored my squirrel red, blue, green.... well you get the idea.  What she really intended was real squirrel colors.  I got an "F".  (Mom reminded me of it years later.)  It taught me that not every effort is an "A".  My parents also read to me from very early.  They also had started teaching me the alphabet.  I didn't go to kindergarten, just started in first grade.  I will admit to growing up in a mixed white collar and blue collar neighborhood rather than an inner city.

First, because while it would be nice to get the best CEO money can buy, paying them $100 million per year does not achieve that goal.  But it does achieve the goal of costing those employees $53 million a year - see the Abercrombie and Fitch example.  The whole premise that the CEO just won't do the job if not pay hundred million is one of the major points in "The Script".  It is false.

No, don't cap his pay, just don't make the rest of the taxpayers pay for it.  ISO should never be a 'salary' expense to a company.

As for Apple, Jobs was brilliant at what he did, but it was NOT creating ideas for new and exciting technology.  He was brilliant at stealing and appropriating other people's ideas who did not have the vision of how to market and maximize the idea.  Sweeping statement time (but true!) - Apple has NEVER had a new idea.  Every successful product they have ever had (and some of the unsuccessful ones - remember Lisa?) was and idea they stole and copied from someone else.  Jobs himself even mentioned this as one of his "articles of faith".

IOW, a good idea without a way to accomplish it is just two guys drinking whiskey and talkin' gubmint.

Woulda' helped them buy more whiskey!

Let's say for argument's sake that to make minimum wage a living wage for single parents with two kids, we had to double the current minimum wage nationwide.  How is that paid for?  What would the affect of the sudden inflationary pressure do to our economy and how many jobs would be cut as a result as employers would figure out ways to get the same amount of productivity out of a smaller work force in order to stay competitive with foreign compeition.
...
This reads more like the liberal playbook, but there are certainly some ideas in there which, in theory, would create jobs and increase wages which is what I asked someone to put up instead of being mired in the problem that there is a wage and wealth gap.  In my opinion, every time societies have tried to flatten the curve between the have and have nots, it's resulted in higher rates of poverty for everyone.  Cuba would be a perfect example of that.

In the 70s, Oklahoma asphalt standards were less than many other states and to build using better paving was not allowed. (Research by my brother back then.)  I don't know if we have improved any.  Brother-in-law syndrome takes care of that.

When I was in Germany in 1995, I saw some construction of new Autobahn paving.  It looked more like our construction of an International Airport runway than our roads.  I also saw on a little country road a sign indicating "Bad Road" (Strasse Schade).  Looked like a brand new Oklahoma road.  The Germans have also decided to pay a lot more for everything too.  Their VAT made the price of a new BMW less in the USA than in Germany with the exchange rate at the time.

Barring a return to full employment, there is no reasonable minimum wage that would cause inflation. Increased demand for goods would merely create more jobs until demand was sated or full employment was reached, at which time inflation would set in.

Your opinion regarding curve flattening is just that, opinion, and it fails to take into account the European social democracies that have been very successful at keeping income inequality to a reasonable level. Note that I'm not talking about Greece or Italy. I'm talking about Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The ones that don't have budgetary issues and don't have banks so poorly regulated that they threaten the entire continent's economy. When the state tries to allocate goods, things don't turn out so well. When the state guides private industry on the straight and narrow through strong regulation, things turn out much better.

In that vein, something has been bothering me about the righties of late. They're acting like the Communists did in the early Soviet Union. They blame the failure of their policies on meddling by those of other political persuasions. Stalin blamed the capitalists for causing mass starvation after forced collectivization. So did Mao in China, for that matter. Extremist Friedmanites (which, sadly, includes many of the Republican primary contenders) blame Democrats and socialists for the failure of their tax cuts to produce lasting growth.

I agree with the vast majority of what you posted in your response to me, but the numbers tell me that we're running out of light sweet crude. (maybe I read The Oil Drum too much) Production already peaked in Saudi Arabia. They're pumping quick as they can. If we're lucky, those deep water offshore fields in Brazil will start producing in a big way soon. It's not so much about reserves as the rate at which we can produce. As I'm sure you're aware, fields produce a lot more quickly when they're fresh, even taking into account our heroic efforts to pump it out as fast as we can.

President Barack Obama wants to spend the next year talking about economic inequality. Republicans shouldn’t take the bait.

In a speech last week in Kansas, the president presented rising economic inequality as the defining issue of our time. As is often true of political speeches, Obama didn’t make anything resembling a tight logical case. Instead he relied heavily on caricature (Republicans allegedly want everyone “to fend for themselves and play by their own rules”) and dubious assertion (supposedly there are billionaires who pay only 1 percent of their income in taxes).

But even for a political speech, Obama’s Kansas remarks were slippery. He never quite came out and said that rising inequality is the root cause of our economic troubles over the last few years. He never said explicitly that we should raise taxes on the wealthy to combat inequality. Or that the Great Depression was caused by too much reliance on free markets and too little government regulation. Or that the tax cuts and market liberalization begun under President Jimmy Carter and continued through the Reagan, Clinton and Bush years were mistakes that should be reversed.
Instead he strongly implied all of these things. Unless he was trying to convey these ideas, his speech made no sense: It was just an agglomeration of unrelated paragraphs.

So why not speak more clearly? Perhaps because these claims, made directly, are either obviously false or politically perilous.

False Claims

Start with the history. Economists generally believe that the Great Depression wasn’t a cosmic punishment for the excesses of the 1920s but the result of an inappropriately tight monetary policy by the Federal Reserve. Nobody has offered an even slightly plausible argument that connects the financial crash of 2008 to George W. Bush’s tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 -- let alone to Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts of 1981 and 1986.

Obama didn’t say that deregulation and tax cuts were worthwhile ideas that eventually got taken too far and caused problems. He said that the philosophy underlying these policies was mistaken and that they have led to a ruinous level of inequality.

Center-left critics of the president’s speech, like the Washington Post editorial board, underestimate Obama when they point out that the policies he recommends are inadequate to the scale of the inequality problem. His solutions are politically constrained. But his ambition, to reverse the last three and a half decades of economic and political history, can’t be faulted for timidity.

During his campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2008, Obama said that he would favor raising the capital-gains tax even if it raised no revenue: It was a matter of fairness.

That’s the impulse at work in his speech and in the 2012 campaign it effectively started. It’s one thing to favor higher taxes on the rich on the theory that the government needs money and they have it to spare. (That’s the case Obama has usually made, until now.) To suggest that their high incomes are in themselves a problem that the government needs to address -- which has to be the case if tax policy is to combat inequality - - is something harder to defend.

Republicans haven’t reached a consensus about how to respond to Obama’s new focus on inequality. Some of them are highlighting statistics that minimize or deny the increase in inequality. A few are saying that inequality is a good thing, the natural result of free markets. Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the House Budget Committee chairman, points out that various government spending programs and tax breaks reward affluent citizens and that reforming those policies is the right way to tackle inequality.

Voters Don’t Care

There’s no need for Republicans to be defensive about this subject. Although inequality has long been a major concern of liberals, most voters don’t seem to share it.

When the National Opinion Research Center asked people whether they believed the government has a responsibility “to reduce the differences in income between people with high incomes and those with low incomes,” in 2008, only 37 percent agreed. Forty-three percent disagreed, and 20 percent had no opinion. When pollsters ask people to name the top issue facing the country, almost nobody volunteers inequality, notes Karlyn Bowman, an opinion-research analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. “I’ve literally never seen it cross the 1 percent threshold,” she says.
But if voters don’t especially care about how much money the rich are making, they do care about how much they themselves are making. A return to robust economic growth and rising middle-income wages doesn’t require reversing a decades-long trend toward higher inequality. It requires improvements to our monetary, tax and health-care policies.

Instead of talking about inequality -- even to rebut Obama’s dubious claims -- Republicans should talk about what voters care about, while pointing out that the president would rather chase ideological will-o’-the-wisps.

(Ramesh Ponnuru is a Bloomberg View columnist and a senior editor at National Review. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this article: Ramesh Ponnuru at rponnuru@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this article: Timothy Lavin at tlavin1@bloomberg.net.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-13/voters-not-buying-obama-s-bogus-inequality-talk-ramesh-ponnuru.html