Response to RW fear mongering about Socialism/redistribution of wealth -

[paparush]

"Dude, the redistribution has already happened. The top .01% have it all."

No response.

General murmuring of agreement by those present.

[socialist_n_TN]

1. Pretty darn good answer. Two sentences............

ALL of our positions need to be boiled down to two sentences.

[Indydem]

2. Do you have a statistic to back that up?

I am highly intrigued by that argument I have been hearing lately, seeing as the top 100 richest Americans only have wealth totaling less than 840 billion. The total wealth held by American households and non-profits exceeds $55 trillion. I would love to understand the relationship.

[fascisthunter]

5. are you kidding us.... you want to nitpick

who has all the money? The rich or the rest of us? Please prove us all wrong.

[paparush]

7. Ok, I'll nitpic

No, I do not have statistics to back that up. There is no statistic to prove that the top 1% own ALL of the wealth. Making a point in a barber shop argument is different than defending a doctoral thesis.

That said, here are some stats that say the top 1% own 43% of the financial wealth. Under the premise of the discussion I was involved in, that being fear that socialism will unfairly redistribute wealth, I merely made the point that a great redistribution of wealth has already taken place.

[Historic NY]

3. I'll have to remember that...

[ashling]

4. There is actually more to this than you might think

James Galbraith (University of Texas) covers it in The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and why Liberals Should Tooand Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay

The cult of the free market "serves as a kind of legitimizing myth -- something to be repeated to school children, but hardly taken seriously by those on the inside." The purpose of this myth, he says, is to"mainly as a device for corralling the opposition, restricting the flow of thought, shrinking the sphere of admissible debate."

The 4 mantras of Reaganomics -monetarism, supply side economics (including tax cuts and de-regulation), balanced budgets , and free trade -- have created the largest redistribution of wealth ever.

To the top

[vanlassie]

6. Google the L-Curve.