Sunday, August 16, 2009

Income Inequality Is At An All-Time High: STUDY

Income inequality in the United States is at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression, according to a recently updated paper by University of California, Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez. The paper, which covers data through 2007, points to a staggering, unprecedented disparity in American incomes.

38 comments:

  1. Generally inequality rises during booms and drops during busts. How much will inequality drop during this bust?

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  2. I don't know, lets bust your head (you don't use it anyhow) and find out

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  3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xAJVri2a1U

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  4. I'm just joking about you anand, however, there are other heads...yes, that might yield better numbers when they are busted.  A little while ago I chose this video to post on my site,  I wonder why?


    http://www.youtube.com/v/OG3PnQ3tgzY


    Note carefully how the artist crafts the contrasts in the video

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  5. <input id="articleId" name="articleId" type="hidden" value="97713"/>
    <h1>A Wall Street Fairy Tale</h1>
    <h2>Now that the danger appears to have passed, Wall Street honchos, with support from some in Congress, are telling themselves that the financial system was perfectly sound all along. We can’t afford their delusion.</h2>


    http://www.theweek.com/bullpen/column/97713/A_Wall_Street_Fairy_Tale

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  6. <span>A Wall Street Fairy Tale</span>
    <span>Now that the danger appears to have passed, Wall Street honchos, with support from some in Congress, are telling themselves that the financial system was perfectly sound all along. We can’t afford their delusion.
     
    http://www.theweek.com/bullpen/column/97713/A_Wall_Street_Fairy_Tale</span>

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  7. <h2>While most of Wall Street melted down, Goldman Sachs only got stronger. Why?</h2>



    http://www.theweek.com/article/index/99492/How_Goldman_Sachs_landed_on_top

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  8. <span>While most of Wall Street melted down, Goldman Sachs only got stronger. Why?
     
    http://www.theweek.com/article/index/99492/How_Goldman_Sachs_landed_on_top</span>

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  9. Here you go, v! YOUtube these guys!

    <span>

    The band is undoubtedly disrespectful to Putin, especially in its 2002 song "FSB Whore," whose title refers to the KGB's post-Soviet successor agency, which Putin once led.
    The song's lyrics are: "Don't listen to anything! / He always lies to you! / Putin, Putin, Putin! / A pig will find filth everywhere!"

    http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.3d88f50b0c43ce8c7501f32de76aa596.7c1&show_article=1</span>

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  10. Why should that be necessary vza, Putin is a bastard just like ours.

    However,  pretty soon the gap will be so pronounced that this will become the reality -

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6PDlMggROA

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  11. THE coolest guy on the planet. He should have shouted," You don't know who you are messing with!"


    (CNN) -- How does it feel? To be on your own? A complete unknown? Bob Dylan might know.

    http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/08/14/bob.dylan/index.html#cnnSTCText

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  12. Just like ours? No quite.

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  13. <span>Just like ours? Not quite.</span>

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  14. What?! Saint Amy???
    Overstepping every ethical and moral boundary, programmer Amy Goodman used her popular Democracy Now! show, abusing her presence on the air, to fuel a "boycott" movement of her own network. Knuckle-headed liberals and leftists from the ADA to some writers at The Nation, in some form or another, bought into the myth that they had to "save" Pacifica. They did so by hounding out of power an incompetent management and replacing it with a vastly more incompetent and ideologically strident and narrow management. Nice going.

    http://marccooper.com/

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  15. Just like ours, working to create billionaires while the people languish. 

    "Under President Putin, the gangster-oligarchs consolidated and expanded ­ from multi-millionaires to billionaires, to multi-billionaires and growing. From young swaggering thugs and local swindlers, they became the 'respectable' partners of American and European multinational corporations, according to their Western PR agents. The new Russian oligarchs had 'arrived' on the world financial scene, according to the financial press.

    Yet as President Putin recently pointed out, the new billionaires have failed to invest, innovate and create competitive enterprises, despite optimal conditions. Outside of raw material exports, benefiting from high international prices, few of the oligarch-owned manufacturers are earning foreign exchange, because few can compete in international markets. The reason is that the oligarchs have 'diversified' into stock speculation (Suleiman Kerimov $14.4 billion ), (Mikhail Prokhorov $13.5 billion ), banking (Fridman $12.6 billion ) and buyouts of mines and mineral processing plants.

    The Western media have focused on the falling out between a handful of Yeltsin-era oligarchs and President Vladimir Putin and the increase in wealth of a number of Putin-era billionaires. However, the biographical evidence demonstrates that there is no rupture between the rise of the billionaires under Yeltsin and their consolidation and expansion under Putin. The decline in mutual murder and the shift to state-regulated competition is as much a product of the consolidation of the great fortunes as it is the 'new rules of the game' imposed by President Putin. In the mid 19th century, Honoré Balzac, surveying the rise of the respectable bourgeois in France, pointed out their dubious origins: "Behind every great fortune is a great crime." The swindles begetting the decades-long ascent of the 19th century French bourgeoisie pale in comparison to the massive pillage and bloodletting that created Russia's 21st century billionaires."

    http://notinhisname.blogdrive.com/archive/cm-06_cy-2007_m-06_d-05_y-2007_o-0.html

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  16. Its called HOW TO CREATE BILLIONAIRES WHILE BILLIONS LANGUISH IN POVERTY

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  17. That is funny about Dylan...hehe  Yes, and Marc Cooper never misses a beat since Pacifica dropped his show. Oh, he did mention that did he not? No? Oh well....lol

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  18. In the meantime, as vza still keeps trying to derail the subject at hand.  Here is my recommendation to halt this robbery both demoestic and foreign which is impoverishing the people at a breakneck spiral downward -


    http://www.youtube.com/v/B1T8xgHdMEM


    Which for some reason individuals like Cooper don't seem to have much to share.

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  19. He shares plenty but they are practical things because he dwells in the real world where most people are not about to riot and rage against the machine.

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  20. Oh really? What world do you live on? Here on Earth, there has pretty much been constant war and unrest for as long as I can remember. And there would be more if it wasn't for all the police, security forces, prisons, propaganda, etc.

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  21. Yes, really. Most people have families. Most people are not going to jeopardize the well-being of their families to go to the barricades.

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  22. The only barricade that exists is your unwillingness to do anything of significance to rock the boat vza.  That is the biggest barricade of all, your comfort zone.  Well, I have news for you, these shits you support by your groveling acquiescence would crush your precious family in the blink of an eye, and it is not far off.  If you think we have seen the end of this current debacle you are sadly mistaken, we are about to see the second dip in the W and all hell is going to break loose. Remember this post as you huddle behind your inadequate barricade.

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  23. Guess what, do you know why this is going to happen? Because of the very subject of this post.

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  24. <span> If you think we have seen the end of this current debacle you are sadly mistaken</span>

    No, I do not believe it is over at all. Whether or not I will be behind a barricade, literally or figuratively, remains to be seen.

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  25. That's true-until conditions get so bad that the well being of their families depends on them taking a stand at the barricades, as you sarcastically put it. It happens over and over in history-here on Earth.

    I don't know if you noticed, but there is virtually no trust for our political and economic leaders. Everyone knows that corporations are constantly ripping them off and that the government doesn't represent them. The reason there has not been major unrest is not because people are so happy with the way things are. Rather, it is because they know what will happen to them if they really challenge the system.But things are uncertain now, to say the least. It is a real possibility that grumbling may not be enough to keep people quiet. Our esteemed leadership knows this: that is why there was plans to enact martial law last Fall when the stock market collapsed. Personally, I don't relish the thought of riots, martial law, etc. and I hope that we can peacefully wrest control of the country-and the world-from the tiny elite who control it. But with the way things are going-with the bailout, the failure of a real national health program, the ever increasing gap between the rich and everyone else, foreclosures, two wars we are in for no reason, I am not too sure how this is all going to turn out.

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  26. Not Dark Yet
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs-frisCZTY&feature=related

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  27. Of course this is a different time and some different circumstances, but it is the same in that a small elite want to control everything. The reisistance began to grow,  and a fellow who thought he had a good life and safe family changed very swiftly -


    http://www.youtube.com/v/WbTZ_-lwJbU


    You do not have to go looking for anything, it will come to you.

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  28. I mean there are many factors that all end up with the same equation. If you just look at the factor of unemployment rate the "official" number is 9.4%.  However this does not take into account those off of the unemployment roles who are still unemployed, those who have jobs that do not cover the cost of living, those who are experiencing forced furloughs, part time workers, etc. If I were to calculate the figures I come up with a little over 15% that are in a combination of the previous mentioned categories.

    On top of this you have those crushed by foreclosure,  but the figures do not tell the whole story.  What they leave out are the twice as many in the pre-foreclosure category,  and the massive weight of commercial real estate.

    You have another rung of those despoiled by credit pressure, loans of various sorts including out of control credit cards.  All you need is a trip to the unemployment line, or an illness and you are ostensibly toast with this load.

    There are dozens of other factors, these being the most familiar.  On top of all of this you have a massive increase in wealth in the upper echelons of society, and many maintain their style of living by creating the unemployment bottom line - this is true whether you are talking about a global corporation with responsibility to a large constituency or a small business.

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  29. VZA, much of the competition to Golman Sachs is no longer in business. This has enabled Golman to raise margins. It might be a long time before competition reemerges in financial services.

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  30. v, don't forget that one of the two cofounders of Google is Russian. Russia does have a successful high tech sector. However, the slow pace of non energy Russian private sector growth is troubling.

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  31. In the Western model we have gone from kingdoms, to feudalism and then to capitalism.  They all have one thing in common - the king had his patronage & court, the feudal lord had his land and intermediary lords etc., and capitalism has its moneyed entourage.  One thing they all had in common and has never changed, that is a small elite.

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  32. <span>In the Western model we have gone from kingdoms, to feudalism and then to capitalism.  They all have one thing in common - the king had his patronage & court, the feudal lord had his land and intermediary lords etc., and capitalism has its moneyed entourage.  One thing they all had in common and has never changed, that is a small elite. In turn, what has been spread all over the planet like a plague is this same system.  This is why the system is collapsing in on itself - by far the majority is impoverished, and that is why any proposed 'recovery" cannot be sustained.
    </span>

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  33. You are partially right Joe.  War has been a constant on planet earth for..... thousands of years.  Long before the US came onto the scene. 

    Americans didnt invent war, and we sure dont know how to stop them.  Do you?  Because that would be totally awesome.  Can you also perhaps cure cancer and invent a low fat good tasting salad dressing?  Cause I mean that woulde be amazzzzinnnnggggg..

    Joe, maybe you know how to bring all wars to a crashing halt so that the only thing we argue about is why we cant hug each other more often??? That would be a super cool thing to do dude :)   :)  

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  34. <span><span>In the Western model we have gone from kingdoms, to feudalism and then to capitalism. </span></span>
    --------
    According to anand it's been all capitalism...Hah!

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  35. As usual, you are full of shit anand, here is where wealth was accumulated in Russia -

    Among the newest, youngest and fastest-growing group of billionaires, the Russian oligarchy stands out for its most rapacious beginnings. Over two-thirds (67 per cent) of the current Russian billionaire oligarchs began their concentration of wealth in their mid to early twenties. During the infamous decade of the 1990's under the quasi-dictatorial rule of Boris Yeltsin and his US-directed economic advisers, Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar the entire Russian economy was put up for sale for a 'political price', which was far below its real value. Without exception, the transfers of property were achieved through gangster tactics ­ assassinations, massive theft, and seizure of state resources, illicit stock manipulation and buyouts. The future billionaires stripped the Russian state of over a trillion dollars worth of factories, transport, oil, gas, iron, coal and other formerly state-owned resources.

    Contrary to European and US publicists on the right and left, very few of the top former Communist leaders are found among the current Russian billionaire oligarchy. Secondly, contrary to the spin-masters' claims of 'communist inefficiencies', the former Soviet Union developed mines, factories, energy enterprises were profitable and competitive, before they were taken over by the new oligarchs. This is evident in the massive private wealth that was accumulated in less than a decade by these gangster-businessmen.

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  36. Virtually all the billionaires' initial sources of wealth had nothing to do with building, innovating or developing new efficient enterprises. Wealth was not transferred to high Communist Party Commissars (lateral transfers) but was seized by armed private mafias run by recent university graduates who quickly capitalized on corrupting, intimidating or assassinating senior officials in the state and benefiting from Boris Yeltsin's mindless contracting of 'free market' Western consultants.

    Forbes magazine puts out a yearly list of the richest individuals and families in the world. What is most amusing about the famous Forbes magazine's background biographical notes on the Russian oligarchs is the constant reference to their source of wealth as 'self-made' as if stealing state property created by and defended for over 70 years by the sweat and blood of the Russian people was the result of the entrepreneurial skills of thugs in their twenties. Of the top eight Russian billionaire oligarchs, all got their start from strong-arming their rivals, setting up 'paper banks' and taking over aluminum, oil, gas, nickel and steel production and the export of bauxite, iron and other minerals. Every sector of the former Communist economy was pillaged by the new billionaires: Construction, telecommunications, chemicals, real estate, agriculture, vodka, foods, land, media, automobiles, airlines etc..

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  37. With rare exceptions, following the Yeltsin privatizations all of the oligarchs quickly rose to the top or near the top, literally murdering or intimidating any opponents within the former Soviet apparatus and competitors from rival predator gangs.

    The key 'policy' measures, which facilitated the initial pillage and takeovers by the future billionaires, were the vast and immediate privatizations of almost all public enterprises by the Gaidar/Chubais team. This 'Shock Treatment' was encouraged by a Harvard team of economic advisers and especially by US President Clinton in order to make the capitalist transformation irreversible. Privatization led to the capitalist gang wars and the disarticulation of the Russian economy. As a result there was an 80 per cent decline in living standards, a devaluation of the Ruble and the sell-off of invaluable oil, gas and other strategic resources at bargain prices to the rising class of predator billionaires and US-European oil and gas multinational corporations. Over a hundred billion dollars a year was laundered by the mafia oligarchs in the principle banks of New York, London, Switzerland, Israel and elsewhere ­ funds which would later be recycled in the purchase of expensive real estate in the US, England, Spain, France as well as investments in British football teams, Israeli banks and joint ventures in minerals.

    The winners of the gang wars during the Yeltsin reign followed up by expanding operations to a variety of new economic sectors, investments in the expansion of existing facilities (especially in real estate, extractive and consumer industries) and overseas. Under President Putin, the gangster-oligarchs consolidated and expanded ­ from multi-millionaires to billionaires, to multi-billionaires and growing. From young swaggering thugs and local swindlers, they became the 'respectable' partners of American and European multinational corporations, according to their Western PR agents. The new Russian oligarchs had 'arrived' on the world financial scene, according to the financial press.

    So, go get screwed anand,  you fucking imbecile

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  38. According to Anand, the world is flat...

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