Rich and poor is a relative, isn't it? Obviously a family could get by on $50,000 annual income, but they would be living from pay-check to pay-check and wouldn't achieve any real wealth. I think the system is broken when so much wealth is concentrated on so few people.
A family certainly can get by on $50K/year. My family of 7 (soon to be 8) gets by on less than that, and I even own a house on 1/2 acre. There isn't any extra, but we get by just fine.
On a related note, whenever one is talking about poverty, what is usually missing is the location factor. Government guidelines on poverty need a location-based component. A family earning $50K/year in the middle of Nebraska has a nice house, plenty of food, 2 cars and their kids play all the sports they want, while the same family earning $50K/year in San Francisco is living in a cardboard box and stealing dog food.
Capitalism is actually much better than any other economic system at lifting people out of poverty. I heard a report about the recent census data the other day. Something like 42% of the people who were below the poverty line 10 years ago are no longer living in poverty. That's amazing. 42% of the poor have left the ranks of the poor in just 10 years. Of course, other who weren't below the poverty level are now. These numbers are not extraordinarily, either. In capitalism, there will always be poor people, but most people don't stay poor.
You are going to have to actually cite that study. Back in 2005, 13.5% of the US population was living in poverty.
(link 1). Unemployment was at 5% at 2005.
(link 2). As of March, 2011, the unemployment rate was at 8.9%.
(link 3)
Are you suggesting that people living in poverty decreased while unemployment almost doubled?
The data is there in the Census Bureau link you posted. Here are a couple of articles about it:
link
link
Looking up the actual data shows that what I said about it wasn't quite accurate. Apparently, the time frame was 3 years, not 10 years. In a 36-month study, 42% of those in poverty at the beginning were no longer in poverty at the end. In fact, the average time someone is below the poverty line is only a few months. In that study, only 3% remained poor for the entire 36 months.
The take-home message is that most people don't stay poor. People go in and out of poverty all the time, and there is only a small number of people who are chronically poor. Of course, those numbers have a lot to do with the calculations to determine poverty, but the point remains that capitalism gives most people the ability to get out of poverty. With that, however comes the ability to fall into poverty.
The economy is not a zero-sum game with a fixed pie. Consequently, I have never supported any sort of draconian redistribution of wealth by the government.
I won't deny there are huge problems with our tax structure, one of which was pointed out by infinix... but you can't blame corporations for that. The government makes the rules... and if the rules were simple instead of convoluted, there wouldn't be "tax credits" of any kind for anybody.
Raping the rich isn't the solution to those problems, a clear and fair tax structure is... and if that doesn't appease your desire for schadenfreude, the world offers several alternatives to capitalism.
Yes, the tax structure needs a major reform. If I were in charge, I would throw out most or all of the 65,000 page tax code and start over.
I am a fan of
The Fair Tax Book. The basic idea is that there will be a very low flat tax and then the only other form of tax would be consumption based. The more you buy, the more taxes you pay.
Sounds like a good idea worth considering. Is that related to the
Fair Tax proposal? The idea of the Fair Tax is to replace all federal tax with a 23% consumption tax on new goods. Every family would get a "prebate" which would cover the tax a family living at the poverty level would pay. So essentially, everyone pays tax only on their spending above the poverty level.
