The Rich Don't Work Anymore—Working Is For Poor People
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1CK1S
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Many believe that poor people deserve to be poor because they’re lazy. As Speaker John Boehner has said, the poor have a notion that “I really don’t have to work. I don’t really want to do this. I think I’d rather just sit around.”
In reality, a large and growing share of the nation’s poor work full time — sometimes sixty or more hours a week – yet still don’t earn enough to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.
It’s also commonly believed, especially among Republicans, that the rich deserve their wealth because they work harder than others.
In reality, a large and growing portion of the super-rich have never broken a sweat. Their wealth has been handed to them.
The rise of these two groups — the working poor and non-working rich – is relatively new. Both are challenging the core American assumptions that people are paid what they’re worth, and work is justly rewarded.
Why are these two groups growing?
The ranks of the working poor are growing because wages at the bottom have dropped, adjusted for inflation. With increasing numbers of Americans taking low-paying jobs in retail sales, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, childcare, elder care, and other personal services, the pay of the bottom fifth is falling closer to the minimum wage.
At the same time, the real value of the federal minimum wage is lower today than it was a quarter century ago.
In addition, most recipients of public assistance must now work in order to qualify.
Bill Clinton’s welfare reform of 1996 pushed the poor off welfare and into work. Meanwhile, the Earned Income Tax Credit, a wage subsidy, has emerged as the nation’s largest anti-poverty program. Here, too, having a job is a prerequisite.
The new work requirements haven’t reduced the number or percentage of Americans in poverty. They’ve just moved poor people from being unemployed and impoverished to being employed and impoverished.
While poverty declined in the early years of welfare reform when the economy boomed and jobs were plentiful, it began growing in 2000. By 2012 it exceeded its level in 1996, when welfare ended.
At the same time, the ranks of the non-working rich have been swelling. America’s legendary “self-made” men and women are fast being replaced by wealthy heirs.
Six of today’s ten wealthiest Americans are heirs to prominent fortunes. The Walmart heirs alone have more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans combined.
Americans who became enormously wealthy over the last three decades are now busily transferring that wealth to their children and grand children.
The nation is on the cusp of the largest inter-generational transfer of wealth in history. A study from the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy projects a total of $59 trillion passed down to heirs between 2007 and 2061.
As the French economist Thomas Piketty reminds us, this is the kind of dynastic wealth that’s kept Europe’s aristocracy going for centuries. It’s about to become the major source of income for a new American aristocracy.
The tax code encourages all this by favoring unearned income over earned income.
The top tax rate paid by America’s wealthy on their capital gains — the major source of income for the non-working rich – has dropped from 33 percent in the late 1980s to 20 percent today, putting it substantially below the top tax rate on ordinary income (36.9 percent).
If the owners of capital assets whose worth increases over their lifetime hold them until death, their heirs pay zero capital gainstaxes on them. Such “unrealized” gains now account for more than half the value of assets held by estates worth more than $100 million.
At the same time, the estate tax has been slashed. Before George W. Bush was president, it applied to assets in excess of $2 million per couple at a rate of 55 percent. Now it kicks in at $10,680,000 per couple, at a 40 percent rate.
Last year only 1.4 out of every 1,000 estates owed any estate tax, and the effective rate they paid was only 17 percent.
Republicans now in control of Congress want to go even further. Last Friday the Senate voted 54-46 in favor of a non-binding resolution to repeal the estate tax altogether. Earlier in the week, the House Ways and Means Committee also voted for a repeal. The House is expected to vote in coming weeks.
Yet the specter of an entire generation doing nothing for their money other than speed-dialing their wealth management advisers is not particularly attractive.
It puts more and more responsibility for investing a substantial portion of the nation’s assets into the hands of people who have never worked.
It also endangers our democracy, as dynastic wealth inevitably and invariably accumulates political influence and power.
Consider the rise of both the working poor and the non-working rich, and the meritocratic ideal on which America’s growing inequality is often justified doesn’t hold up.
That widening inequality — combined with the increasing numbers of people who work full time but are still impoverished and of others who have never worked and are fabulously wealthy — is undermining the moral foundations of American capitalism.
Comments
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didnt read. The stock market crash a few years ago changed a whole lot of things.
The wealthy dont work...evrybody else does. The rich work a lil smarter rather than harder. -
If it keeps going, the poor will be rich and rich will be poor.
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This only really applies to the super rich
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I thought chuck wrote the thread title
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The whole point of getting rich is so that you are yours can be forever secure. These stupid ? liberals are going to destroy America.
America is not ? ? ass western Europe or corny ? Canada -
We need to define poor though. We always look at the extreme end of things. Working class people are getting their ? kicked. We are being taxed like no ones business on paychecks and bonuses as well as, goods and services. So, the really good salaries that people have on paper end up being next to nothing.
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The country is on the cusp of being run by trust fund babies (some already are in there) and these dirt poor rednecks don't see or comprehend that they insult them every time they talk about hardworking or impoverished Americans bc to them they've been convinced by people who don't work that blacks are jobless and lazy even though the majority of them probably clock in every day and work shoulder to shoulder with black people
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I know guys that just live off of the rent on some of their real estate which they inherited from their parents. They probably collecting food stamps also since they don't have a job.
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cainvelasquez wrote: »I know guys that just live off of the rent on some of their real estate which they inherited from their parents. They probably collecting food stamps also since they don't have a job.
You have to work or be on SSI (disabled) to receive Foodstamps. If not, you will have to pay it back.
http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/able-bodied-adults-without-dependents-abawdsThe Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) limits the receipt of SNAP benefits to 3 months in a 3-year period for able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) who are not working, participating in, and complying with the requirements of a work program for 20 hours or more each week, or a workfare program. -
@JusDre313 are you refuting the link that i posted? Discuss.
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FuriousOne wrote: »cainvelasquez wrote: »I know guys that just live off of the rent on some of their real estate which they inherited from their parents. They probably collecting food stamps also since they don't have a job.
You have to work to receive Food Stamps or be on SSI (disabled). If not, you will have to pay it back.
http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/able-bodied-adults-without-dependents-abawdsThe Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) limits the receipt of SNAP benefits to 3 months in a 3-year period for able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) who are not working, participating in, and complying with the requirements of a work program for 20 hours or more each week, or a workfare program.
Let's not be naive here. There are probably plenty of rich people cheating the system. If you have a lot of assets that have been handed to you and capital income, then there might be no incentive to work depending on the individual. -
cainvelasquez wrote: »FuriousOne wrote: »cainvelasquez wrote: »I know guys that just live off of the rent on some of their real estate which they inherited from their parents. They probably collecting food stamps also since they don't have a job.
You have to work to receive Food Stamps or be on SSI (disabled). If not, you will have to pay it back.
http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/able-bodied-adults-without-dependents-abawdsThe Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) limits the receipt of SNAP benefits to 3 months in a 3-year period for able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) who are not working, participating in, and complying with the requirements of a work program for 20 hours or more each week, or a workfare program.
Let's not be naive here. There are probably plenty of rich people cheating the system. If you have a lot of assets that have been handed to you and capital income, then there's no incentive to work.
I'm sure there are. The fact remains, you have to work or be disabled to receive stamps. People get caught for that all the time. -
FuriousOne wrote: »cainvelasquez wrote: »FuriousOne wrote: »cainvelasquez wrote: »I know guys that just live off of the rent on some of their real estate which they inherited from their parents. They probably collecting food stamps also since they don't have a job.
You have to work to receive Food Stamps or be on SSI (disabled). If not, you will have to pay it back.
http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/able-bodied-adults-without-dependents-abawdsThe Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) limits the receipt of SNAP benefits to 3 months in a 3-year period for able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) who are not working, participating in, and complying with the requirements of a work program for 20 hours or more each week, or a workfare program.
Let's not be naive here. There are probably plenty of rich people cheating the system. If you have a lot of assets that have been handed to you and capital income, then there's no incentive to work.
I'm sure there are. The fact remains, you have to work. People get caught for that all the time.
On SSI also? I am not american so i don't know the particular system, but i am sure there is some kind of program for the disabled. -
The whole point of getting rich is so that you are yours can be forever secure. These stupid ? liberals are going to destroy America.
America is not ? ? ass western Europe or corny ? Canada
A man of ? shouldn't think like this.
Because
? it. -
The whole point of getting rich is so that you are yours can be forever secure. These stupid ? liberals are going to destroy America.
America is not ? ? ass western Europe or corny ? Canada
Inheritance wasn't the issue or the subject of the article
For you to be s black militant you sound very similar to a republican -
cainvelasquez wrote: »FuriousOne wrote: »cainvelasquez wrote: »FuriousOne wrote: »cainvelasquez wrote: »I know guys that just live off of the rent on some of their real estate which they inherited from their parents. They probably collecting food stamps also since they don't have a job.
You have to work to receive Food Stamps or be on SSI (disabled). If not, you will have to pay it back.
http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/able-bodied-adults-without-dependents-abawdsThe Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) limits the receipt of SNAP benefits to 3 months in a 3-year period for able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) who are not working, participating in, and complying with the requirements of a work program for 20 hours or more each week, or a workfare program.
Let's not be naive here. There are probably plenty of rich people cheating the system. If you have a lot of assets that have been handed to you and capital income, then there's no incentive to work.
I'm sure there are. The fact remains, you have to work. People get caught for that all the time.
On SSI also? I am not american so i don't know the particular system, but i am sure there is some kind of program for the disabled.
Reread. The disabled get stamps. You can't get them for too long (3 months the max) if you are able bodied. They will make you become a wep worker. -
I plead the 5th but lets say this you can be anything in this country and money is endless. Working-class is and was made for the industrial agricultural age. Anybody still consciously thinking of working a 9-5 job an being wealthy or financially secure in 2015 is a lost cause. Remember JOB means Just Over Broke increase your financial IQ increase your wealth.
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Many believe that poor people deserve to be poor because they’re lazy. As Speaker John Boehner has said, the poor have a notion that “I really don’t have to work. I don’t really want to do this. I think I’d rather just sit around.”
In reality, a large and growing share of the nation’s poor work full time — sometimes sixty or more hours a week – yet still don’t earn enough to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.
It’s also commonly believed, especially among Republicans, that the rich deserve their wealth because they work harder than others.
In reality, a large and growing portion of the super-rich have never broken a sweat. Their wealth has been handed to them.
The rise of these two groups — the working poor and non-working rich – is relatively new. Both are challenging the core American assumptions that people are paid what they’re worth, and work is justly rewarded.
Why are these two groups growing?
The ranks of the working poor are growing because wages at the bottom have dropped, adjusted for inflation. With increasing numbers of Americans taking low-paying jobs in retail sales, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, childcare, elder care, and other personal services, the pay of the bottom fifth is falling closer to the minimum wage.
At the same time, the real value of the federal minimum wage is lower today than it was a quarter century ago.
In addition, most recipients of public assistance must now work in order to qualify.
Bill Clinton’s welfare reform of 1996 pushed the poor off welfare and into work. Meanwhile, the Earned Income Tax Credit, a wage subsidy, has emerged as the nation’s largest anti-poverty program. Here, too, having a job is a prerequisite.
The new work requirements haven’t reduced the number or percentage of Americans in poverty. They’ve just moved poor people from being unemployed and impoverished to being employed and impoverished.
While poverty declined in the early years of welfare reform when the economy boomed and jobs were plentiful, it began growing in 2000. By 2012 it exceeded its level in 1996, when welfare ended.
At the same time, the ranks of the non-working rich have been swelling. America’s legendary “self-made” men and women are fast being replaced by wealthy heirs.
Six of today’s ten wealthiest Americans are heirs to prominent fortunes. The Walmart heirs alone have more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans combined.
Americans who became enormously wealthy over the last three decades are now busily transferring that wealth to their children and grand children.
The nation is on the cusp of the largest inter-generational transfer of wealth in history. A study from the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy projects a total of $59 trillion passed down to heirs between 2007 and 2061.
As the French economist Thomas Piketty reminds us, this is the kind of dynastic wealth that’s kept Europe’s aristocracy going for centuries. It’s about to become the major source of income for a new American aristocracy.
The tax code encourages all this by favoring unearned income over earned income.
The top tax rate paid by America’s wealthy on their capital gains — the major source of income for the non-working rich – has dropped from 33 percent in the late 1980s to 20 percent today, putting it substantially below the top tax rate on ordinary income (36.9 percent).
If the owners of capital assets whose worth increases over their lifetime hold them until death, their heirs pay zero capital gainstaxes on them. Such “unrealized” gains now account for more than half the value of assets held by estates worth more than $100 million.
At the same time, the estate tax has been slashed. Before George W. Bush was president, it applied to assets in excess of $2 million per couple at a rate of 55 percent. Now it kicks in at $10,680,000 per couple, at a 40 percent rate.
Last year only 1.4 out of every 1,000 estates owed any estate tax, and the effective rate they paid was only 17 percent.
Republicans now in control of Congress want to go even further. Last Friday the Senate voted 54-46 in favor of a non-binding resolution to repeal the estate tax altogether. Earlier in the week, the House Ways and Means Committee also voted for a repeal. The House is expected to vote in coming weeks.
Yet the specter of an entire generation doing nothing for their money other than speed-dialing their wealth management advisers is not particularly attractive.
It puts more and more responsibility for investing a substantial portion of the nation’s assets into the hands of people who have never worked.
It also endangers our democracy, as dynastic wealth inevitably and invariably accumulates political influence and power.
Consider the rise of both the working poor and the non-working rich, and the meritocratic ideal on which America’s growing inequality is often justified doesn’t hold up.
That widening inequality — combined with the increasing numbers of people who work full time but are still impoverished and of others who have never worked and are fabulously wealthy — is undermining the moral foundations of American capitalism. -
Someone's been listening to Dame Dash.
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i keep tellin yall bout that ? ? @zombie ...he wanna be white soooooooooo bad. lol
even a ? can see how ? up this ? is. smmfh -
Poor is the wrong word because, there are families busting their ? just to get by while these rich ? are chilling and barely feeling taxes.
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Shizlansky wrote: »
Who told you I was a man of ? ??? -
The whole point of getting rich is so that you are yours can be forever secure. These stupid ? liberals are going to destroy America.
America is not ? ? ass western Europe or corny ? Canada
Inheritance wasn't the issue or the subject of the article
For you to be s black militant you sound very similar to a republican
Never said I was a militant you ? on this forum love preconceived notions. I am a pan Africanist not a democrat republican or a militant. -
Well as a pan africanist you sound like a conservative ?
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Well as a pan africanist you sound like a conservative ?
I am no ? but I am conservative. Small government means more power for blacks more self reliance. Which is at the heart of garveyism and pan Africanism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL6Jv2Jpnpg
