HughBeaumont

HughBeaumont's Journal

January 28, 2014

Wealth Gap: A Guide to what it is, why it matters.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealth-gap-guide-why-matters-083657223.html

Q. Hasn't there always been a wide gulf between the richest people and the poorest?

A. Yes. What's new is the widening gap between the wealthiest and everyone else. Three decades ago, Americans' income tended to grow at roughly similar rates, no matter how much you made. But since roughly 1980, income has grown most for the top earners. For the poorest 20 percent of families, it's dropped. Incomes for the highest-earning 1 percent of Americans soared 31 percent from 2009 through 2012, after adjusting for inflation, according to data compiled by Emmanuel Saez, an economist at University of California, Berkeley. For the rest of us, it inched up an average of 0.4 percent. In 17 of 22 developed countries, income disparity widened in the past two decades, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

snip

Q. So why has income inequality worsened?

A. There's no simple answer. Globalization has created "superstars" and concentrated pay among corporate executives, Wall Street traders, popular entertainers and other financial elite. At the same time, factory workers now compete with 3 billion people in China, India, eastern Europe and elsewhere who weren't working for multinational corporations 20 years ago. Many now make products for Apple, Intel, General Motors and others at low wages. This has depressed middle-class pay. And pay has risen much faster for college graduates than for high-school graduates. These trends have contributed to a "hollowed out" labor market, with more jobs at the higher and lower ends of the pay scale and fewer in the middle.

Oh, by the way . . . . PLLLEEEEAASSSE don't read the comments section. It's too early and you'll just get angry at the ridiculous amount of red-baiting, dog-whistling, false dilemma "arguments", Horatio Alger paens and general stupidity that's expected of the Cheeto munching basement dwellers that comprise Yahoo's audience.

January 23, 2014

Yahoo Comment Clowns: Our Hatred Burns Like An Eternal Flame, No Matter WHAT the Subject Is.

http://music.yahoo.com/blogs/music-news/love-won-t-keep-them-together-%E2%80%94-captain---tennille-are-divorcing-010913382.html

Utterly amazing that, even on a story so apolitical as this one, the Yahoo Comment Clowns will come up with SOME creative way to get around saying "I hate (insert racial slur here)s, expeshially that (racial slur) in the White House!!1!!!"

What must it be like to live with such blatant contempt and hatred and willingly never change or turn it off for even a second?

January 21, 2014

Remember when casino magnate Steve Wynn, in 2012, said "Obama so anti-biznezz!! (sob)"

“I’m afraid of the president. I have no idea what goofy idea, what crazy, anti-business program this administration will come up with,” Wynn said. “Every business guy I know in the country is frightened of Barack Obama and the way he thinks.”

http://www.vegasinc.com/news/2012/oct/10/wynn-says-hes-afraid-build-las-vegas-because-obama/

Wynn Resort's stock return under President Obama's terms: 1,300.65%

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=WYNN+Interactive#symbol=wynn;range=5y;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;

Remember Romney supporter Ken Langone saying how misguided the pope was talking about inequality? Remember his equally idiotic and fascist partner Bernie Marcus shilling for Romney, stating Obama is "choking recovery" and Obamacare will bring doom to us all??

Home Depot's stock return under President Obama's terms: 272.93%.

Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan . . . All of them enjoying 135% or better returns since 2009. Even GE, a relatively flatline, stable stock, was a smart long in 2009: 120%.

Oh, and our favorites, the Koch boys? While they've laid off workers and campaigned heavily against all things to the left of Joe Lieberman, their net worths are now 36 BILLION. APIECE.

"Democrats are bad fer biznezz??" O.F.F.S.

How long is America going to continue to believe these guys?

How long is America going to let the predator class run roughshod over them?

January 15, 2014

Surprised no one's posted this yet re: The Death of Net Neutrality.

Granted, this is an extreme hypothetical.

Or is it?

January 3, 2014

Ralph Nader's Open Letter to former President George W. Bush: "The Country You Destroyed"

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/01/03#.UscnosC-gbE.facebook

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Member since: Fri Aug 13, 2004, 03:12 PM
Number of posts: 24,461

About HughBeaumont

If anyone's wondering why I haven't been here much lately, it's because I feel no one is learning anything from 2016. Neoliberalism is a thing and it doesn't win elections in the 21st Century. People want a candidate that's going to take strong, non-waffling stands on human rights the rest of the world enjoys. Enough living in the goddamned Reagan 1980s. Enough taking solar panels off the roof. Enough introducing more rightwingedness into American economics. Enough medical bankruptcies. Enough governing by mythology. Enough science denial. Enough of spitting on women, children, veterans and the LGBTQI community. Enough kicking the can. ENOUGH. America needs to move past it's "everything has to be about making a buck" bullshit. I'd prefer a candidate not born during the FDR/Truman administrations. No offense, but you had your time . . . and you got us Trump. Plus, I can't take another one of these still-Capitalist Boomer codgers yap on about "bootstraps" when college now costs a mortgage, necessity costs have been outpacing wage growth for 20 years and automation promises to kill more jobs than it creates. I don't want to hear what is or isn't "politically achievable". Kick-the-Can economics was never asked "How is it going to be paid for?". Tax Cuts for the rich were never given a spending limit. Folly wars were never asked "Why is this necessary?". Corporate Pork by the billions was and is always approved. America's safety net needs to be greatly expanded and retirement age needs to be drastically lowered. This country throws out far too many people that still have a decade or two of prime contribution left. If life doesn't get fairer for you or I pretty goddamned quickly, we aren't going to have much of one.