The Truth About Income Inequality

[Fife]

The free market isn't making you poor. Your public servants are. They are waxing your ass.

All that Glitters Is Not Green

Say what you will about urban woes, there is an American City — let’s call it the Emerald City — where everything appears to be swell, all the time. Just think: even among its lowly municipal employees there are 10,600 who make over $100,000 a year. That’s $1.3 billion a year, total.

This city employs a commissioner of aviation — I suppose to fend off flying monkeys and witches on broomsticks. The commissioner must do a good job, because last year she earned a $100,000 bonus, on top of her $300,000 salary.

Emerald City’s Water Management Department employs none but the finest: more than 700 of its people merit and receive over $100,000 a year, each.

To keep the streets all green and shiny, Emerald City pays at least 160 of its Streets and Sanitation employees more than $100,000 a year. And to keep those streets safe, the city fields 5,007 Police Department employees who work so hard, what with overtime and all, that they too make more than $100,000.

. . .

But here’s a curious thing. The median household income of the United States is something like $56,000, but in only 16 of Emerald City’s 50 most populous statistical neighborhoods is the median household income $56,000 or greater. The bottom 16 neighborhoods have incomes of less than $37,000. Isn’t that interesting?

Another interesting statistic: In 2016, there were 762 homicides in Emerald City, a number that a police spokesman called “unacceptable.” Yet by mid-August of this year, the figure for 2017 already stood at 463.

And if report be true, Emerald City is not the spotless land of delight that Dorothy Gale reported visiting. Recent visitors speak of filthy streets, ridiculous traffic, ugly social customs, and a general sense that if you are not very rich in Emerald City, then you are very poor.

I think there’s a chapter in one of the Oz books where this problem comes up. Having discovered what is actually going on in the Emerald City, a crowd rushes to the palace, shouting, “To the Wizard! To the Wizard! The Wizard will explain it!” Sure enough, the door of the palace opens, and out comes the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He’s carrying a book, and he says, “Back where I come from, we have people who are called theo . . . theologo . . . theologians! They spend all day thinking about the human soul. And they have nothing more to say about it than they can find in this old book.”

The Wizard opens it and reads:

A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?

“So,” said the Wizard, “you can all go home. Get out of here now — go on! Go on home.”

Who rang that bell? GTFOH


See also, http://www.pensiontsunami.com/

[SuburbanFarmer]

Nah, everything's fine here. We don't need to actually buy things anymore, just beg for charity from the 1%. It'll be great, trust me.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-0 ... advertised

Why does the Fed want higher inflation? The general explanation is higher inflation benefits bankers, borrowers and the expansion of credit that underpins our consumerist economy.

The idea is that as wages rise with inflation (assuming wages are rising, which they're not for the bottom 90%), households will have an easier time servicing existing debt and getting new loans.

The payments due on existing debt become easier to make as inflation expands everyone's paychecks. (Note that this expansion doesn't mean the purchasing power of the wage has increased; it's an illusory expansion that serves the credit industry.)

Banks benefit because they earn fees on originating new loans and rolling over existing debts into new loans.

[Fife]

That link in the OP about Emerald City was good stuff. Hopefully some of you all read it.

[Speaker to Animals]

Quick run down.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Quick run down.

Government payrolls are too large, and they're taking all the money. Curiously missing a paragraph on the 1% making $1 mill/year and up, or the prologue where the wizard goes inside and gets back on his knees.

[Fife]

Quick run down.

Not what catass said. But you already knew that.

You don't need a quick rundown, at least not any more than what I captioned the OP with. You're a Chicago / "Emerald City" survivor. Read the whole thing, it's just a short little parable.

I see "income inequality" in bright contrast, in-your-face clear when the story is about "Emerald City," much more than when the story is about "evil robber baron."

[Fife]

The reason you are broke, anxious, and exploited is not the patriarchy or white supremacy. The reason is the state.

Not an outlier, just another example of the truth about income inequality:

Lawyer For IT Aide Says Dem Congressmen To Blame For Falsified Spending Records

House-wide administrators take a periodic inventory of all equipment over $500, but items listed as less than that amount can more easily go missing. The difference in the price was made-up to the vendor, CDW Government, by wrongly inflating the cost of a “service plan.” The cost for the equipment’s service plans did not count toward triggering any internal tracking. Service plans are costs associated with support in case something breaks.

Some of the equipment was shipped to the Awans’ homes, and many pieces of equipment could not immediately be produced when investigators asked to see it, the senior congressional official told TheDCNF.

An allegedly lackadaisical approach is especially troublesome because procurement violations are not the only focus of the probe into the Awans. The Washington Post reported that investigators found the crew accessed a server 5,400 times without authorization and transferred “massive” data off of the House network. Democrats are potentially letting Imran get away with security breaches to keep the procurement issues from being looked into, the senior official told TheDCNF.

“We will never know the amount of penetration these guys had unless [the offices] do the right thing and come forward,” the official said. Collectively, the Awans and their friend Rao Abbas ran IT for one in five House Democrats, and had access to all their files.

The Washington Post reported Sept. 17 that Abid Awan’s attorney, James Bacon, responded to a question about why orders were falsified to show amounts less than $500 by saying, “In a fluid situation you do what you’re ordered to do.” Any missing equipment, Bacon said, “disappeared after it was brought to the folks who were demanding it. … It sounds to me like there’s a lot of scapegoating here.”

Christopher J. Gowen, one of Imran’s lawyers, added in The Washington Post: “There’s nothing that Imran did that wasn’t requested by one of his clients on House staff.”

[The Conservative]

The reason you are broke, anxious, and exploited is not the patriarchy or white supremacy. The reason is the state.

Not an outlier, just another example of the truth about income inequality:

Lawyer For IT Aide Says Dem Congressmen To Blame For Falsified Spending Records

House-wide administrators take a periodic inventory of all equipment over $500, but items listed as less than that amount can more easily go missing. The difference in the price was made-up to the vendor, CDW Government, by wrongly inflating the cost of a “service plan.” The cost for the equipment’s service plans did not count toward triggering any internal tracking. Service plans are costs associated with support in case something breaks.

Some of the equipment was shipped to the Awans’ homes, and many pieces of equipment could not immediately be produced when investigators asked to see it, the senior congressional official told TheDCNF.

An allegedly lackadaisical approach is especially troublesome because procurement violations are not the only focus of the probe into the Awans. The Washington Post reported that investigators found the crew accessed a server 5,400 times without authorization and transferred “massive” data off of the House network. Democrats are potentially letting Imran get away with security breaches to keep the procurement issues from being looked into, the senior official told TheDCNF.

“We will never know the amount of penetration these guys had unless [the offices] do the right thing and come forward,” the official said. Collectively, the Awans and their friend Rao Abbas ran IT for one in five House Democrats, and had access to all their files.

The Washington Post reported Sept. 17 that Abid Awan’s attorney, James Bacon, responded to a question about why orders were falsified to show amounts less than $500 by saying, “In a fluid situation you do what you’re ordered to do.” Any missing equipment, Bacon said, “disappeared after it was brought to the folks who were demanding it. … It sounds to me like there’s a lot of scapegoating here.”

Christopher J. Gowen, one of Imran’s lawyers, added in The Washington Post: “There’s nothing that Imran did that wasn’t requested by one of his clients on House staff.”

Not just the government, but a specific type... cronyism, and in this case the DNC not willing to clean up its own house.

[Hastur]

This is how it works.