The Giant Pool Of Money. Implications

are you saying it isn't fair that my parents could have sent me to college while yours couldn't?You may also know that I take care of my 94-year-old Mom with Alzheimer's at partially my own expense. Is that fair?

If the wealthy own or control 90+% of everything and benefit the most from corporate profits, why not hold their feet to the fire also? The alternative is to tax the middle class at higher rates so that they essentially have little more than the working class. You think I was horrible for saying not to focus exclusively on the hungry, but I was being metaphorical. Yes, some of us had it easier than others, but by excluding the responsibility of the rich to contribute you are forcing the middle class to become overburdened. Don't you see that?

So you would have it that there were only two classes? Rich and working?

I have no debt

I have a savings account

I make more than I need to live on

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Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain "
~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
"as long as chance rules, God is an anachronism."~Arthur Koestler

Because I belong to a union, thank God! Not necessarily. What difference does it make? We would invite them to join the union also, except that their employer tries to actively prevent us from talking with them about it.If all of the cashiers were in the union, it would be the same as the working class uniting with the middle class, which is apparently what you hope to achieve.Without a union, the employers simply continue to hire more help at cheap-as-possible rates and fire them rather than promote them excepting the few who become managers.We have discussed unionism before. Our last contract was, in fact, one of the top grocery contracts negotiated in the entire country. We helped bring the bottom closer to the top wage bracket. The only sad and telling thing was that few of the workers even bothered to vote.Today's generation only looks to the paycheck at the moment rather than planning long term for their livelihood and health care, it seems.

I totally and fully agree! Negotiations involve both sides. There is no onus on any one side. Are you anti union, then? Because we will call a strike if necessary to protect our position. The alternative is to accept less than what we collectively determine our value to be. We prefer negotiations and voluntary compliance but will use some force(non-violent) if necessary. After all, nobody gets to tell the CEO's what to pay themselves!

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In states without Right-to-Work laws, the workers covered by a union contract can refuse to join the union and then pay the fees associated with the workplace bargaining. States with Right-to-Work laws require union contracts to cover all workers, not just the ones who are members of the union.
This problem can reduce the union’s bargaining strength, which ultimately results in lower wages and benefits.

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The unions no longer have the power of collective bargaining, they have to represent the non-union employees without funding, and the strength of the union is greatly diminished.

Right To Work laws are unfair because they destroy the power of collective bargaining. The whole point of a union involves the ability to collectively bargain.

Since employees no longer have to belong to the union, they also no longer have to strike. If enough of them negotiate individually rather than collectively, the wage bottom no longer goes up.Strikes become less effective as a negotiating tool.

I see no evidence of this. My union actively is involved with non-unionized workers who wish to become unionized. The local Dispensaries are a great example---they recently became unionized to a large degree.Read this article: All Hollowed Out

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When it comes to explaining American economic trends, it is important to remember how critical a role manufacturing and unions have played in the buildingand now dismantlingof a strong middle class. For generations, factories provided good jobs to people who never went to college, allowing familiesfirst white ethnic immigrants, and then othersto be upwardly mobile. Bringing together large numbers of people under a single roof, factory jobs were also relatively easy to organize. As the sociologists Bruce Western and Jake Rosenfeld have argued, unions at their prime helped create a moral economy in which wages rose both in firms with unions and those without them, and in which the average worker had a notable voicehowever, compromised back then by nativism and other exclusionary tendencieslobbying on their behalf in Washington.

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I really don't see what more you expect unions to do. We are weaker than we once were, and that is a problem. Right-To-Work laws weaken us further since employees can no longer count on solidarity among the labor force. Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

The laws make it so that an employee does not have to join the union. In case of a labor dispute, we cannot make the strike as effective with Right To Work in place. Evidence also shows overall wages dropping and lagging in RTW states.More from this article:

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As organized labor in this country has withered, an extreme individualism has stepped in as the alternativea go-it-alone perspective narrowly focused on getting an education and becoming successful on one’s own merit. This works well for some, but for othersespecially the two-thirds of Americans over the age of 25 who don’t have a bachelor’s degreeit often means getting mired in an economy of contract work, low pay, and few, if any, benefits. These prospects suggest that this is an age of diminished expectations for the working class.

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I am basically done ranting now. Life could be a whole lot worse than it is. Quite frankly, I grew up spoiled by the era my parents lived in---it was easier for people to make it in 1960 than it is today.

I fully understand the dilemma. What I don't agree with is your solution. You seem to want to put the most pressure on the middle rather than where it belongs---on the top.
Say you had a town with 100 people. 70 of the people were poor. 25% were middle. 5% were at the top. The top 5% owned/controlled 80% of the towns wealth. The middle 25% controlled 15% and the bottom 70 split the remaining 5%.In my mind, you would advocate pressure more on the 15% to share their wealth before even addressing the 5% with the lions share.

Let's look at our American dream...now more like an evolving nightmare: I'm not sure what Trump has done except lower tax rates on the wealthy and increase global warming through domestic fossil fuel production.The world is ever-changing and ever-growing. Now that more and more countries are coming up, there are no shills for the carny barkers of capitalism to exploit...except their own middle class. And you still want the middle to pay taxes and give our two mites to the poor.Sustainable? Perhaps in a liberal kum ba yah sense. But hardly preferable.And note one thing on the graph above: The latest climb started with 9-11-2001 and has not reversed course since. Trump appears to want to continue to fuel the military-industrial complex and screw the debt. But I worry. Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.

OK jar, what can be done? The evidence clearly shows the following:
1) Rising Public Debt
2) Extensive Global Warming
3) Continued Overpopulation.
And here we have ringo claiming that Jesus wants our last two mites.I suppose if I hold one back i will get struck dead like Ananias.

This means that the Republicans lie when they claim global warming is a hox. They know damn well that if we drive this car until the wheels fall off many will die. they don't care. They want to escape the wrath with their heirs and the rest of the world be damned. And they don't want any government telling them what to do...since now one of them Trump--has the guts and chutzpah to boldly trash the planet.