Because they have disproportionate power, not absolute power. We still have the vote, which is not keyed to income. For now. (Actually, in some special-district governments nowadays, such as Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District within Osceola County, Florida () (which some have characterized as "like the Vatican with mouse ears), are controlled no by equal votes of their residents, but by their landowners on a “one dollar, one vote” basis.)
That phrase…I do not believe it means what you think it means…
“Pork barrel,” in most cases, is legislation that appropriates money for local/state projects, which in many cases directly benefit only the local/state population, either by improving infrastructure (being from Altoona, PA, the darling region of Bud Shuster and the benefactee of the I-99 boondoggle, I know infrastructure pork barrel) or opening project jobs up to area residents. The definition of pork barrel is legislation pursued at the national level that benefits ONLY residents of a particular locale/state. It’s legal bribery of votes: “Look what I did for YOU! Vote for me!” It’s not some mysterious shadowy morass of legislation that only benefits rich people.
WC: But if the rich had disproportionate amounts of power in the US state, federal and local governments then why do they pay huge amounts of taxes for things they do not use?
For one thing, the amount of taxes that the rich pay that go to means-tested entitlements (services only for the poor) really isn’t that much, compared to the amounts used for defense, servicing the federal debt, roads and police, etc.
For another thing, I think that most wealthy people are not stupid, and realize quite well that there are advantages for everybody in having a social safety net. Rich people need educated workforces, peaceful and livable communities for conducting business, and decent conditions of public health, or else their privileged lifestyles will be at unnecessary risk.
IMHO, a small minority of wealthy and middle-class people have been bitten by the kill-the-government bug and would like to believe that total privatization really would make things better instead of worse for everybody. These ideas appeal to short-term self-interest and to anti-government sentiments on all levels, but I personally doubt that a majority of rich people are really committed to them.
That is conspiracy theory territory though, to say that the wealthy support education and healthcare so they can have a large group of healthy labor. Paying off the national debt was $321 billion in 2004. And US spending on the justice system was 167 billion in 2001 it is probably closer to 190 billion now. That is only 1/4 the public spending on healthcare, and there is probably some overlap in that too since the ‘public expendatures on healthcare’ probably includes buying health insurance for police officers, other law enforcement officials and criminals.
Defense spending is about $400 billion a year.
WC: That is conspiracy theory territory though, to say that the wealthy support education and healthcare so they can have a large group of healthy labor.
??? Huh?? “Conspiracy theory”? What’s “conspiratorial” about it? It sounds to me like simple obvious common sense to say that people who employ other people want their employees to be decently healthy and educated, and that most employers see the sense of contributing tax revenues to healthcare and education for the poor on that account.
How on earth could that be interpreted as a “conspiracy” of the wealthy against the workers in any way? It sounds to me like exactly the opposite: a convergence of interests to produce solidarity between the wealthy and the workers.
WC: That is only 1/4 the public spending on healthcare
Where are you getting this figure of (as I deduce from the only figures that you did quote) around a trillion dollars annually in tax-supported spending on healthcare? As far as I can tell, total spending on healthcare, including all private expenditures, is about $1.4 trillion annually. The amount of taxpayer money being spent on healthcare specifically for the non-rich, which is what you were talking about, is nowhere near that amount. So I stand by my statement that the tax dollars of the rich are going much more towards debt service and defense than to means-tested healthcare.
http://www.eriposte.com/health/other/healthcare_US.htm
Scroll down until you get to the two graphs under the heading
IV-D. HEALTHCARE SPENDING
They both show the public percentage of healthcare spending to be about 45%.
http://www.bbriefings.com/cdps/cditem.cfm?NID=1331&CID=5&CFID=4146264&CFTOKEN=42980475
We spent 1.8 trillion in 2004 on healthcare so 1.8x0.45=.810 trillion. The veterans administration, medicaid and medicare are big parts of that 810 billion. Then there is the insurance carried by government employees like police officers, teachers, politicians, transportation workers, etc.
If the wealthy wanted the middle class to be healthy they could also do it via corporate sponsored healthcare through employment
Simple answer from a simple man: sooner or later the American system’s going to burst.
And you’re geeting much closer to sooner rather than later. In the Europe Vs Anerica struggle, the verdict’s already in
Of course, as I said, I am rather a simple guy. So, don’t take my word for it – just watch it happen.
Meantime, those that can, enjoy the fruits of modern day feudalism. It won’t lasy long.
Greed under check == you’ve heard it hear first.
Not gonna last. Unless we all go. And with BushCo, that might still happen.
Correcting last post:
[quoteRedGreed under check == you’ve heard it hear first.[/quote]
Turns into “Greed unchecked = won’t last”
Fuck i, if I wasn’t clear enough, just ask.
But naked capitalism is simply not gonna work in the long run. Period.
The economic system in the US is not “naked capitalism”, if by that you mean* laissez faire. * If not, what do you mean?
Hard for me to take this post seriously RedFury…and as its quite late I think I won’t. Man, check into the board from my hotel room and THIS is where this thread has gotten too…
Well, I’m not holding my breath for THIS prediction. Unless by sooner you mean several centuries, and later…well, later than that.
Again. You have any actual data that Europe is pulling ahead of the US? And that this necessarily means the US is going down the tubes? I think its a lot of wishful thinking on your part…and perhaps some fantasy folded in.
On THIS subject? Never fear…I won’t be taking your word for it. I won’t be taking what constitutes a ‘cite’ from you on this either. You have a rather…interesting…perspective on what constitutes capitalism, the US economic system, how said system actually works, what its current status is, and its relation to the world at large. 
Care to make a prediction as to what constitutes ‘it won’t lasy long’? Depending on what you mean exactly by ‘long’ I might agree with you. Perhaps you are using geological time? If so you are quite correct…I seriously doubt that the US ‘feudalism’ will last another million years, say. I’m certainly the ‘serfs’ will revolt withing, say, 100,000 years or so…a mere blink of the eye in geological time.
Just out of curiosity…what century are you living in?? Is this supposed to be a comment about modern American business, or are you a time traveler from the distant past??
All go where? I suppose if you are positing that the US is going to ‘go’ then it makes sense that the rest of the worlds economies are going to go tits up too…so perhaps this prediction is somewhat closer to target than your usual ones on economics. I don’t think it has much to do with ‘BushCo’ though (i.e. I doubt he will have such a sever effect on the economy as you obviously think he will…certainly not in the short term)…if the US economy folds its curtains for your precious Europeans too…or didn’t you realize that?
-XT
WC: We spent 1.8 trillion in 2004 on healthcare so 1.8x0.45=.810 trillion. The veterans administration, medicaid and medicare are big parts of that 810 billion.
Especially Medicare, but Medicare is not a means-tested entitlement, i.e., one designated specifically for the non-rich. All workers over 65 are eligible for Medicare, and the wealthy elderly definitely use it—in fact, they use more of it than the poor (who tend not to live as long).
True, and the same is true of social security. However everyone pays 2.9% of their income in medicare taxes without an income ceiling (unlike Social Security which has a ceiling around 87000). So the wealthiest 10% may get $1000 more (to be in the wealthiest 10% of americans you have to have a personal income of roughly $80000) than the poorest 10% but over the course of their lives the wealthiest 10%, and especially the wealthiest 1%, which is what this post is mostly about (the wealthiest 5-10% are just doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, etc. The wealthiest 1% are businessmen and people born into wealth) will pay alot more into medicare. A person who makes 120k a year (about what a physician makes) pays $3480 a year in medicare taxes, a person who makes 9k a year pays $261 a year in medicare taxes.
It is a tradejy though that money is necessary to buy health here in the US. I am certain the poor live much longer lives in other western countries where healthcare is made available to anyone who needs it. But the rich still pay more into medicare than the poor and working class (people who make a million a year pay 29k a year in medicare taxes) and get less out of it in relation to how much they pay into it. A middle class person who makes 30k a year and pays $870 a year in medicare taxes will get more for their money than a wealthy person who pays $10000 a year in medicare taxes and uses his own private insurance when he retires.
Although this may be reviving this thread from the clutches of death, I ran across an interesting statistic in Suburban Nation (A book which I will start some discussions about once I finish it and The Death and Life of Great American Cities) citing The Next American Metropolis (I don’t have that text handy, so I can’t check where these statistics ultimately came from) that I thought would be interesting to this discussion.
The text was discussing, obviously, the growth and life of suburban cities, from a land developer’s point of view. Its basic premise is that “traditional urban” design (the old fashioned downtown, housing-above-shops, smaller blocks, narrower streets, etc that we associate with older cities) is something economically and socially superior to the spreading suburban sprawl, which it regards with more than a little venom as poor land use and design that will ultimately lead to decay, fiscally and socially.
These are topics I will bring up after reading some other texts, so please don’t drag them out here, but I wanted to give this point of reference of the bias of this book, for the record.
There are a great number of factors entering into data such as this, but the authors posit that suburban “sprawl” design is increasing the cost of living and creating economic statisfication between communities. The text suggests rather directly that the rise of square footage per person and per vehicle is rising to unsustainable levels.
Given the position by some in this thread that wealth is winding its way up to the richer at expense of the poor and middle class, I think that this data is interesting, if valid.
I’d be interested in seeing the cites on that Demorian if you find the book. I did a quick search (its after midnight after all and I have to fly to New York tomorrow), but here was a brief blurb about home ownership. Mainly the article talks about foreign born citizens owning homes, but:
This seems to be saying that home ownership is on the rise, with 70.3 percent of US natives owning a home.
This was interesting too:
Wish I knew how to insert a chart, but here:
The general trend, again, is up…i.e. more folks are owning a house as a percentage of the population. They don’t have the figures for 2003-2004 for some reason…least I couldn’t find them. I have a hard time believing that the bottom has dropped out though, what with the US still in the midst of a housing bubble and all.
For a country teetering on the brink of the abyss we seem to be doing fairly well all things considered…
-XT
If you like those, I highly recommend the following:
America’s Undeclared War: What’s Killing Our Cities and How We Can Stop It, by Daniel Lazare (Harcourt, 2001).
How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Road Not Taken, by Alex Marshall (University of Texas Press, 2001).
The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape, by James Howard Kunstler (Free Press, 1994).
Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century, by Kunstler (Free Press, 1998).
The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, by Kunstler (Free Press, 2001).
Cities Without Suburbs: A Census 2000 Update, by Dean Rusk (Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2003).
Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America, and How We Can Take It Back, by Jane Holtz Kay (University of California Press, 1998).
A Better Place to Live: Reshaping the American Suburb, by Philip Langdon (University of Massachusetts Press, 1997).
A Field Guide to Sprawl, by Dolores Hayden (W.W. Norton, 2004).
The New Transit Town: Best Practices in Transit-Oriented Development, by Hank Dittmar and Glorida Ohland (ed.) (Island Press, 2004).
New American Urbanism: Re-forming the Suburban Metropolis, by John A. Dutton (Skira Architecture Library, 2001).
The New Civic Art: Elements of Town Planning, by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Robert Alminana (Rizzoli International, 2003).
The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community, by Peter Katz (McGraw-Hill Professional, 1993).
Charter of the New Urbanism, by the Congress for the New Urbanism (McGraw-Hill Professional, 1999).
And the following websites:
I don’t even pretent I can contribute anything new or articulate to this thread. But something puzzles me.
Ramanujan said:
[…]
[…]
How is one entitled to money? I mean, how can money belong to you by right ? Who would have more right than someone else to have money?
I know that, as a principle, money you earn by working belongs to you. But does it really?
And, die hard capitalists often play that “world’s smallest violin”, saying that Bill Gates et. al worked hard to make their billions, but how much harder do they have to work? Compared to, say, a nurse working double shifts to make ends meet?
Who exactly plays this violin? I think you just constructed a strawman. It’s not the **amount **of work that matters, but the **value **other people put on your work-- ie, what they are willing to pay you for it. I’m sure there are many people who work much harder than Bill Gates. So what? The capitalist system rewards results, not effort (ie, not effort in and of itself).
[QUOTE=John Mace]
Who exactly plays this violin? I think you just constructed a strawman.]/QUOTE]
:dubious: It ain’t a strawman, John. Practically every defender of capitalism, intellectual or visceral, economic-libertiarian or religious-traditionalist, plays that particular violin.
Ongoing measurements of wealth inequality have an erroneous assumption that it’s the same people that compose “highest 1%”, “lowest 20%”, etc. on an ongoing basis.
See:
From Liberty Haven
Think of all the people you’ve known through out your life. Haven’t you seen a significant amout of wealth mobility?