Just to be fair and I'm not sure it's true here but I suspect it is, the way this data is typically presented to show such disparities is highly flawed. The biggest problem is that it typically is pre-tax and pre-government bennies. In other words, people use data that ignores all efforts to date to fight the war on poverty to argue for more government redistribution.

Pre tax and government benefits, the average HHI in the top quintile is 14X the average in the bottom quintile. After tax & benefits, it drops to 3-4X. It's a huge difference.

Holy fuck, people in this country complain too much. Just lay back and enjoy it You aren't that important. I promise.

reposting this from hpn

really good read that continues on through the comments

Good read if you like sweeping generalizations and stereotypes.

I'll admit we have serious issues but this is just a cheap shot.

Fuck this guy and most of the commentors on there. He's free to leave whenever he wants.

About Ed

Ed is ginandtacos. He wrote this about himself in the third person – like Bob Dole, except he used both hands.

Too soon?

Ed is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Giant Public University in the South after receiving his Ph.D. in political science from Giant Public University in the Midwest. He teaches Intro to American Government, Public Opinion, Elections, and The Presidency to a select group of very lucky boys and girls each semester. His academic research studies the spatial and geographic context of political behavior – partisanship, turnout, and public opinion. He also performs stand-up comedy on the regular and plays/played drums in a band called Tremendous Fucking. Like every band on the planet, they have a MySpace. It is highly recommended that you buy their latest album off of iTunes in order to get into heaven.

Like many Americans now between the ages of 21 and 40, Ed was raised in a household in which Ronald Reagan was worshipped more fervently than Jesus, Santa, and Carl Weathers combined. One of his first clear memories is being taken to a Reagan/Bush 84 campaign event in the old Chicago Stadium, the highlight of which (bear in mind, we're talking about a 5 year old) was Reagan's entrance atop a fire engine. Accordingly, Teenage Ed was a well-read, viciously conservative little bastard, the ruiner of many an otherwise good time. Then one day in 1998 something snapped and he realized that A) he gave a flying shit about people other than himself and B) making a lot of money in order to emulate the miserable lives of our parents was not all that appealing. That's when things got a lot more tolerable for everyone involved.

Basically, his goal in life (and this blog, in case they're not one and the same) is to channel Bill Hicks, Mark Twain, Carl Jung, and Mencken. Albeit without the virulent racism in Mencken's case.

Also I don't think PHD's in Religious Studies should count.

Here's some propaganda. Maybe if they taught googling better in Indiana, you could have found this, too (SICK BURN!)

http://www.bractohuntsville.com/newindex1.php

Squirg, you guys couldn't move there because the public transpo is non-existent (and never will be existent, despite the fact that all these fucking engineers should be able to shit a hover train to space or some shit).

Also I don't think PHD's in Religious Studies should count.

You know Phil Kovacs, right?

my phd having friend couldn't wait to get out of Huntsville, said it was the worst place he'd ever lived.

Just to be fair and I'm not sure it's true here but I suspect it is, the way this data is typically presented to show such disparities is highly flawed.

Dude, really, really? "I'm not sure it's true here but I suspect it is, that this data contradicts my core beliefs so obviously is wrong." Any range of data shows that there has been an astonishing re-distribution of wealth since the 1970s not just to a few wealthy individuals but to multi-national corporations which have little regulatory interference to their unfettered greed.

I make a lot more money today than I did ten years ago, I hope I didn't redistribute anyone else into poverty (although knowing the industry I'm in, I did). Redistributed the hell out of some Indians into the middle class along the way too! I wonder if Harry's graphs include illegal immigrants into their counts.

But in the end, I don't care about the disparity between the poor and the rich as much as I would care about a disparity between the poor from 1980 and the poor today.

You are entering your prime income years and of course you are making more money now than when you were younger. There is plenty of valid and reliable data which demonstrate that a comparable wage earner ten years ago has not increased, and in some studies markedly declined, in the past ten years. Suffice it to say that, given the structure of our economic "wealth distribution", you make less money NOW than you would have.

As far as your "lack of care" for disparity? The poor have retreated; and the implications of creating a third world country with a walled off oligarchy armed against the huddled masses yearning to shop at Walmart... good luck with that. So much for liberty and justice for all.

Harry, do you have any rational ideas for getting the poor (or even the middle class) to give a fuck?