Done. No guesses.

another expert completely ignored by the media

Morning. Go.

Completed. NG. EZPZ. The American media only ignores conservative experts, but will manufacture liberal ones.

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Tuco..."during Clinton... " don't let the fact his presidency was ushered in by the greatest job and wealth creation engine in the history of mankind shade your assessment of all the good work which...errr...uhh...Valiantly lead the country into the land of prosperity!!! Buuuahahahahahahaha...

The Book is called "Think Fast and Slow"...it'll help you understand some Mythstakes in your correlation and conclusions and your biases to filter relevant info to support your unsupportable conclusions....FWIW

My correlations and conclusions are not based on anything other than the statistics that are available for Shared Prosperity over the last 40 years. http://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-ineq\nuality/a-guide-to-statistics-on-historical-tr\nends-in-income-inequality

lk911 you want to continue to believe that trickle down economics works for the middle class, fine. The facts show that yes indeed it does work, but only for the very few. After all this is really just a fight over 3-5% raise over the top tax rate.

And besides your greatest job and wealth creation engine was going south real fast during Bush 1, or did you forget that? And when that greatest job and wealth creation engine was put back in place under Bush II what happened?

Hoodwinked

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tuco, I favor a different theory as to why the wealth gap is increasing in the US. The original fault lies in economic theory from many decades ago when it was widely considered proven that free international trade would benefit all participating countries because all their economies would experience a boost.

What was generally missed by those economists seems to have been the risk that the boosted individual economies would primarily benefit businesses which participated in the foreign trading and yet, at the same time, would impoverish local economies from which jobs disappeared overseas.

In my opinion, the original hoodwinking was performed by powerful (wealthy) businessmen and businesses who promoted those economists who were adept at arguing for the benefits of free international trade. Eventually free trade became a "successful" reality and the dissident economists seemed to disappear.

The same thing has happened in more recent times to the many scientists who found themselves on the "wrong" (politically underfunded) side of the global warming debate.

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tuco seems to be making the same false assumption that most liberals make. The wealth gap between richest and poorest only matters if the poorest don't have basic necessities. If everyone was eating, staying dry at night, has a cell phone, tv, computer...all the modern amenities...would we really care that the richest guy has a million times the wealth of the poorest? You also have to look locally. Compared to the world, almost everyone in the US is "rich". It only takes $34,000 after tax income to be in the top 1% worldwide, but it takes $465k to be in the top 1% in just the US. Relative income only matters if you're angry that the rich have money and you don't.

Fallacy in that last statement, RandLS. Relative income matters to me. I have money, but my humanity and conscience lead me to care about those who are lacking and hopeless. And I'm angry that the few failsafes we had in place for them are being chipped away by this heartless new administration.

RandLS: You have carefully carefully avoided discussion of the present situation in America in which the poorest do not have basic necessities. Indeed, your own argument implies that the wealth gap does matter under such conditions. Very confusing.

Thank you, dorens.

The poorest in the US have basic necessities. People on welfare and medicaid are in a lot better shape than plenty of people around the globe. What so many fail to remember, the amount of income someone makes doesn't define how well off they are. You have to sum all of the things they receive to know how well off they are. Someone who gets food, housing, transportation, medical care, etc., in the US is getting a lot more than a $0 income.

This also flows directly into the reason wages haven't increased over the last 40 years like some think it should. If you get more for 'free' then you're going to get paid less. So congrats when you convince the government to give you more stuff, or force your employer to give you more stuff, but all you've done is lost the freedom to choose where the money that got you that stuff went.

1Hammer, you clearly don't know people who are truly destitute - so poor that they don't have the wherewithal to get on medicaid. You've never met children who are hungry. You've never seen houses that have no running water. We're the wealthiest country in the world, and I see all of this every single day.

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