Are income and wealth accumulating in proportionally fewer hands?

[samintx]

I'm getting sick of this "they have theirs, I want mine. gimme gimme". There seems to be an opinion anyone that has collected a bank account some how it was given to them with not effort. There are scam artists but there are a bulk of people who have a bank account from management of their income.

[davester]

samintx wrote:
I'm getting sick of this "they have theirs, I want mine. gimme gimme". There seems to be an opinion anyone that has collected a bank account some how it was given to them with not effort. There are scam artists but there are a bulk of people who have a bank account from management of their income.

That makes zero sense. I don't even know what your point is, other than that you're pissed at something. Income inequality occurs because plutocrats manipulate the system to give themselves more and others less. I'm guessing that your post is some kind of justification for that behavior but I can't quite fathom what exactly it is that you're thinking.

[$tevie]

As stated before, the poll is odd because it's asking if we believe in a known fact. I would have preferred some other method of starting the discussion because this one feels kind of silly, like asking if we believe in Daylight Saving Time. Like it or not, there it is.

[Ted King]

$tevie wrote:
As stated before, the poll is odd because it's asking if we believe in a known fact. I would have preferred some other method of starting the discussion because this one feels kind of silly, like asking if we believe in Daylight Saving Time. Like it or not, there it is.

This thread wasn't intended to be about starting a debate about the topic (although if the person who disagreed had left some reason why they disagreed, it probably would have led me to ask more questions about why they disagreed). That's why I did a poll rather than post a question.

I have been surprised in the past when people don't think something is a fact that seems to be obvious to me. I was curious about if this is one of those cases or not on this forum. This seemed to be a way to find out, at least in this forum, if this factual issue is one of those where there is more disagreement than I was inclined to think - I wanted to check against my biases. That's all I intended. Sorry for the oddness of the endeavor.

[davester]

At least we found that there's at least one person out there without critical thinking skills (but we knew that already).

[gabester]

samintx wrote:
I'm getting sick of this "they have theirs, I want mine. gimme gimme". There seems to be an opinion anyone that has collected a bank account some how it was given to them with not effort. There are scam artists but there are a bulk of people who have a bank account from management of their income.

Actually, think of it like this:

If you have $10 you can't even pay the monthly fee on a bank account.
If you have $100 you can barely afford to eat enough to survive a month.
If you have $1000 you can eat and secure shelter for a month.
If you have $10000 you can eat and secure shelter for about a year.
If you have $100000 you are living above 90% of Americans for a year.
If you have $1000000 you can get an annuity that earns you $20000 a year.
If you have $10000000 you can get an annuity that earns you more than 99% of workers earn WITHOUT LIFTING A FINGER.

I have nothing against someone who has started at $10 and actually worked, created, gained that wealth. However, I suspect that in MANY cases such wealth isn't truly earned so much as lucked into - that many a forum member or random person off the street in the same circumstances, once they reached a certain level, could make out just as well if not better. Heck, the only problem I have with the above scenario is that at some point the "system" is basically just paying rich people to be rich, and that many of those who are rich JUST GOT LUCKY. And I don't even think $10 million net wealth is ALL that rich. But why does ANYONE need more than that? What good does it do to allow individuals to possess more wealth than that? Inherently, EXCESS WEALTH would seem to destabilize democracy every bit as much as poverty. Add in the disconnect of individual vs corporate speech and it's readily apparent that the system in the United States is dramatically stacked against the interests of its human citizenry.