This thread ended when Goomshill made his post.

except the wealthy in society don't have incomes.....

you're skewing again

they use capital gains, which are also taxed on a tiny fraction

This post was edited by bitg_pj on Oct 14 2014 09:05pm

Its okay, I was actually quoting some fairly well known republican and conservative economist almost line for line, I just forgot his name, he was at some conference around here a month or two ago
minus the communist shit bit, of course

This post was edited by Goomshill on Oct 14 2014 09:09pm

Financial transparency is all well and good , but it won't change anything if people think the Golden rule is - He who has the Gold makes the rules.
We already know who has the Gold and who makes the rules. and if men are motivated by Gold , they will never be motivated to do the right thing.

You're not reading again.

The instructions in the link include traditional income, BENEFITS (which includes stock options, health insurance, etc.), and PENSIONS (which include capital gains). Hell it even includes loans as income. Granted, you do have to subtract taxes (payroll, income, etc.). Still, if you include benefits and the like, 30k really isn't that much.

Naw. Wall street has to hide its shady dealing behind opaque walls and obfuscation. Theres certainly room for blatant financial manipulation and monopolization, and I think trust busting is well in order, but having transparency is very fundamental in keeping the cancer from sprouting up once again. When people can point out what is wrong and legislate and campaign against it, it can't be so heavily abused. But when the libor rate can be set by a wizard behind a curtain, a billionaire circlejerk ensues. I think there are certainly fundamental flaws with democracy compared to say a meritocracy that will always ensure inherent corruption and bias towards disproportionate stakeholders, and this is not something that can be easily rectified. But even a flawed democracy can be kept with checks and balances, and some modernization reforms for those antiquated safeguards are in order.

No, I'm reading perfectly fine, you're skirting the issue by making absurd claims that someone on 30k a year is somehow a wealthy elitist when compared to the rest of the world because they have the ability to pay bills and eat and house themselves paycheque to paycheque ....

The problem this thread is here to discuss is wealth disparity....I am close to that top 1% , * which is actually around 45k USD annually, not 30k* There is approximately 225 Trillion dollars of wealth in the world, if you divided that wealth you'd get about 32k of wealth equity in USD ...personally I probably don't have much more than that....although I am not suggesting everyone has equal wealth ...my point pure and simple is that there is MORE than enough to sustain everyone on this planet with ease....

And we allow the rich in our society to exploit 50-75% of the worlds population because we get to soak up some of the scraps

This post was edited by bitg_pj on Oct 14 2014 09:32pm

They are a wealthy elitist. 95% of people living in first world countries are wealthy elitists. YOU are a wealthy elitist. I am a wealthy elitist. SKINNED is a wealthy elitist.

As Goomshill said, as long as everyone has access to some food, very basic medical care, some shelter, and clean water, that's good enough. Those are easily solved and preventable. Things like education, roads, etc. are secondary things.

not so easily solved

Boiling water?