The new Gilded Age. 1985, 13 billionaires. Today, overy 1,000

[Skwmom]

according to a program on CNBC. Not sure what program b/c I only watched it for a few minutes.

How dare we even think about raising their taxes. They might end up in a soup line or something. Plus, we need to continue on with the trickle down economics that have worked so well for this country.

[bridgit]

1. Welcome to the bfee, where the nouveau riche sit at the little kids table for T-Day...

[KittyWampus]

2. if only we could have found ANOTHER bubble faster, that could've been 10,000 billionaires

and the rest of America could officially become a third world country.

[Skwmom]

3. We go from one fake "economic boom period" to another. You think

more people would start to figure that out.

I think China outfoxed us. They and other countries bought off congress and by doing so were able to destroy this country without firing a shot.

[deadmessengers]

4. Are those numbers inflation-indexed?

If not, they're engaging in a little intellectual dishonesty. Inflation has made the dollar a little less than half as valuable as it was in 1985, so for an apples-to-apples comparison, they should be comparing the number of people with a net worth of about 485 million in 1985 to the people with a net worth of a billion today.

I'm certain there's been a substantial increase, but I have a suspicion that it's not as large as what's been portrayed.

Oh, and if you want to play around with inflation indexes: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

[w4rma]

5. Why is it dishonest when wages for regular people have been pretty much the same since 1985. (nt)

[deadmessengers]

7. Irrelevant.

First of all, since when are billionaires (the topic of this discussion) "regular people"? Not in my world, they're not. Second, this isn't about wage inflation - This is about the purchasing price of the dollar, which has gradually decreased. They're 2 totally different microeconomic concepts.

I've said this a hundred times around here - we have the truth on our side, we don't need distortions to make our points. The repugnicans do.

[w4rma]

9. Not irrelevant. The purchasing price for everyone has gone down, even though wages haven't moved.

Except for billionaires, whose "wages" have only gone up. They don't even get taxed at the same rate the rest of us do. They get taxed at the capital gains rate which is something like 15%.

[Maru Kitteh]

6. Is that every or ovary?

I would like each of my ovaries to become billionaires. Where do I sign them up? :-p

[Sherman A1]

8. Yeah, trickle down has worked out so well for everyone

if you happen to be one of the robber barons. For the rest of us, not so much so.

The concentration of wealth has been a huge part of the problem along with the increasing greed by those at the top of the rung.