Bad analogy. You are comparing and contrasting welfare to reward. When my boss has taken me (and my coworkers) out to lunch, I order what I want, no matter the price. In fact, I often suggest the more expensive dining establishments when this sort of thing happens.
It depends. If somebody has a Toyota Camry, that's one thing. But if somebody is driving a new Lexus 450 and receiving welfare...that just seems wrong. You should not be able to expect the taxpayers to subsidize your luxury car.
If somebody buys a luxury car and has a $700 monthly car note but needs government assistance to then buy food and pay for utilities, the provision of those benefits absolutely subsidizes the payment of that luxury car note. The reality is that the same person would require less assistance if they had a $250 monthly car note. It's pretty simple, really.
um...a Toyota Camry is NOT a cheap car..a used Kia is a cheap car. The US has this terrible obsession with cars. We spend an average of $6,000 a YEAR on car notes - One of the dumbest things Americans do. if you are in debt or financial trouble, you're being financially stupid by carrying a car note. I just sold my 98 Saturn with 186,000 miles. Over the last 15yrs of owning that car, I rarely had it in the shop. It looked like crap, but it saved me about $60,000 to not have a car note for the last 10 years. I might have spent $5,000 in upkeep over the last 10 years..if that much. Thats maybe $500 a year (brakes, new tires, timing chain, etc). But, because I don't have a car note, I've paid $14,000 on my wifes student loans in the last year and I just paid $6,400 cash for a 05 Minivan with only 69,000 miles on it. Next year when the loan is paid off, we'll take the "car note" money and put it into savings for a large 6 months worth of expenses savings account. Yes, we have fun..we went to Florida for a week last year, and we'll go to San Antonio this summer for a week. Next year we're taking the kids to Disneyworld. My point - if you have a car note, why should the taxpayers subsidize anything for you for very long? I understand unemployment is sometimes needed for a short time..but if your on welfare, you better get rid of that car and buy a cash car.
Never fails on this BBS - a thread about the astronomically disproportionate and growing distribution of income to the very topmost fractional percentages of the overclass turns into a series of digressions about whether or not poor folks are living too high on the glorious welfare hog or driving the proper automobile. Newsflash bros - the poor folks coudl drive caddies, camrys or rickshaws and it wouldn't really be of any relevance to the subject at hand. Carry on.
I don't care how much the wealthy own, I don't even care if the top 1% owns 99% of the country, as long as those who are below me on the social ladder stay below me!
Yes - because there's no absolute level at which inequality ceases to matter - it's by definition relative. But in the current distribution, if the great unwashed masses were driving caddies, the top fractional percents would be driving around in Luxury-equipped Star Destroyers
Actually, the current districution is a lot more uniform ("same") than the distribution years ago - the distribution in the middle 50 percent doesn't really vary that much, with a tiny group of super rich at the very top. This is the distribution *you* want to protect - the one where there's very little distance between being in the 30th percentile or being in the 60th percentile, but a massive, insurmountable gulf between being in the 99.9th one and the 85th one. Basically, you want everybody to be the same fighting over the diminishing pie, except for the super-rich (who get more pie) and the very-poors, who get no soup. In my opinion - it's not important that we are all the same fighting over scraps. It's important that we don't have off-the-charts oligarchy, as this formula has generally proven to be a loser 100 percent of the time in history. This is all pretty clearly explained in the video, btw.
Nobody is arguing that we should all have the same or be the same. I would argue that an income distribution that is as skewed as ours will produce a weak economy with very slow economic growth.
What Rowdy said has a lot of basis in fact. If you have a system in which the vast majority of income is held by few, the many have fewer disposable dollars. Therefore, they buy fewer goods and services. This will stifle growth. In any healthy free economy, there will be haves and have nots. That isn't the problem. When the gap between the top and the bottom has widened as it has here...if it continues to do so, in time our economy will look very similar to Mexico. You will have the very rich and the very poor with not much in between.
And that all may be true. But which county has a stronger economy, faster growth and less income disparity?
It does. and it has nothing to do with capitalism. Every great state in the past ultimately fails for some reason. Success breeds complacency, and the powerful crave more power. Ultimately the inequality will reach a point that people will simply reject it and revolution will occur to reset the balance and let the whole thing start again.
