The Super Rich Are Killing Our Democracy It was foretold by Thomas Jefferson that the downfall of a democracy is the accumulation of wealth by the rich and the lack of money for the poor. This is now happening with the Super Corporations controlling the flow of money and the flow of money controlling our politicians. Barbara Ehrenreich, in her article, “The Trouble With The Super Rich”, talks about: America being divided more and more by money. The upper class is shrinking in size, but not in wealth. Having such a small amount of people possessing such a large amount of the wealth will pull down society.
When corruption occurs it damages the reputation of the employees and the business. Society relied upon this firm to assist in making them money but the firm was more concerned with their bottom line. Many of the individuals doing business with these firms lost their life savings and destroyed some of the trust that investors have with the Wall Street firms. It makes people have second thoughts about investing in the stock market. Another effect this unethical behavior had on these organizations been they agreed to pay a penalty of over $1.43 billion dollars as compensation to the victims.
These institutions borrowed billions of dollars to purchase companies they weren’t experts in, allowed no money down mortgages, and used financial devices to calculate exactly how much they could lose if things went wrong so they needed little money on hand in reserve. However, in 2007 and 2008 when interest rates began to rise, asset prices fell, and borrowers couldn’t pay off debts the “Dumb Money era” crashed and burned and took the American economy down with it. The government and taxpayers are now responsible for paying off the $700 billion bank and financial institution bailout, along with many companies needing to shut down and lay off thousands of workers as well. Alan Greenspan appeared before congress in 2009 to discuss that after reevaluating his theories on which the “Dumb Money” era was based on (low interest rates, unregulated markets, and the ability to use debt instruments to manage risk) he found an error in his judgment. Gross believes that if we continue to listen to people like Alan Greenspan, another “Dumb Money” age may
A strong believer in rugged individualism, Hoover did not think the federal government should offer relief to the poverty-stricken population. Focusing on a trickle-down economic program to help finance businesses and banks, Hoover met with resistance from business executives who preferred to lay off workers. Blamed by many for the Great Depression, Hoover was widely ridiculed: an empty pocket turned inside out was called a Hoover flag, the decrepit towns springing up around the country were called Hoovervilles. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the rich governor from New York, offered Americans a New Deal, and was elected in a landslide victory in 1932. He took quick action to attack the Depression, declaring a four-day bank holiday, during which Congress passed the Emergency Banking Relief Act to stabilize the banking system.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States dropped 2.3% in 2010 after accounting for inflation. Overall, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation since December 2007. Should we be excited that our incomes are going down and that a record number of Americans slipped into poverty last year? Should we be thrilled that the economic pie is shrinking and that our debt levels are exploding? All of those that claimed that the U.S. economy was recovering and that everything were going to be just fine having some explaining to do.
401(K) has become ineffective because of the corruption of big business, the misunderstanding of and as a result a mishandling of the 401(K) accounts, and its correlating dependency on the market’s success. Making profit is important to people. Most of all, improving the bottom line is the primary objective for major companies. “For Robert Shively, learned that his employer, Occidental Petroleum Corporation, or also-known-as Oxy Pete,” wanted to forgo the guaranteed-employer pension plans for the less demanding 401(K) system where it is based on contributions from employee’s pay rather than from the employer’s profit. This forces the employee to save without any effort but, due to this, workers began to neglect the social security and entirely dropped the use of the original pension plan.
Being that these types of assets are From significant parts of savings, this is a logical argument. 1982 to 1989, the Dow Jones Average went from 884 to 2,509 which drastically increased capital assets’ values. There was an impressive drop in the unemployment rate during Reagan’s administration as well. 17 million new jobs were created and the unemployment rate fell from 9.7% to 5.5% by the time Reagan’s presidential term ended (Niskanen & Moore 1996). The hours worked by working aged adults grew during
The reason for the people selling all of their stocks at the some time is too complex to explain in the introduction. When they did sell, the buyers would only buy at an extremely low price. Because of this imaginary price drop, the stocks used as collateral for loans were now worthless (in the eyes of the people and the bank owners) and so they demanded real money. The people had plenty of this, but all of it was in stocks...that were rapidly dropping in value because of some ignorant, greedy and bewildered stockholders were buying their stocks for low prices. As soon as everyone found out (thought) the stocks were worth much less, everyone sold and additional cash was needed to pay off all of their debts.
The shutdown happened because our leaders failed to come to a compromise on how to spend our tax dollars. So instead of taking any means necessary to allow for the prosperity and well-being of their country, Republicans just sat on a pile of undistributed money and played the waiting game. Thankfully, Congress made a deal and got the economy back on its bumpy track. If Congress had failed to do so, however, the effects would have been catastrophic. The value of the dollar would be pennies, millions of people out of work, and the US missing a debt interest payment for the first time.
The minimum wage is a form of coercion in which it forced employers to hire at an arbitrary price that otherwise wouldn't be used if not for the government's intervention. The minimum wage causes a few detrimental effects. By raising the minimum wage the employer would either have to fire workers because they cannot keep up with the wages or raise the prices of their products which don’t benefit the so called 99%. Another point is that there doesn't need to be a minimum wage because the superseded fear is that businesses will hire at super low wages caused by collusion. Well contrary to this popular belief the real world doesn't work this way at all.