Economic Equality

The word "equality" has been used often lately. Women should be paid the same for doing the same job as men regardless of tenure or excellence. So a woman who has been great at her job for ten years should get as little as a man who has been there, doing the same job for 10 days. 

Recently, the CEO of a very successful company, Salesforce, was asked if his company pays men more than women. He denied it but approved of an audit. The audit found that men are paid more for the same job. He immediately ordered his staff to ensure that everyone doing the same work should be paid the same. That would mean that a brand new employee should be paid as much as a tenured one. This was not considered.

One of the interesting claim for equality came for award winning economists. They coined the term "income inequality" to point out the wide gap between the rich and the poor. While it is obvious that the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor, the word "inequality" means "not equal." Does that mean we should all be economically equal? It hasn't even worked in communist countries. In China there are a billion living in poverty whereas hundreds if not thousands are very rich, even billionaires. The same is true in Russia, Venezuela, and North Korea. 

The gap is exaggerated by using pretax income of the well-to-do including stocks and stock options. They do not reduce the gap by subtracting all the taxes the successful pay. The top 10% of households pay more than 45% of all taxes collected, while 47% pay no federal income taxes.

The poor are identified without including transfer payments and benefits. They don't include the EIC, free breakfast and lunch programs in public schools, food stamps, Medicaid, SSI, CHIP, etc. The average family of four living below the poverty level gets $30,000 in benefits ($50,000 in Hawaii).

Many of us heard the term and accepted it as gospel without thinking about it; who would know better than economists?  They were right about the 2008 recession, weren't they? NO. But economists are very smart and we should just follow them.

While we complain that CEOs of multi billion dollar companies get as much as $10 million in salary and bonuses, we don't complain about entertainers and professional athletes who make much more for much less work. We are not heard to ask why do NFL players who play half of the season's 17 games make millions a year to do their favorite thing? We don't ask why do two or three excellent basketball players get $80 million a year to play 115 games. Why do wonderful actors like Jennifer Lawrence get $80 million a year?Even "celebrities" like the Kardashians, who display no special talent, make tens of millions each year.  

We are still upset that business CEOs get much less for much more work, available 24 hours a day and 365 days a year.

It's another reason to think for ourselves and not follow the mainstream media or the experts.  They are not always right and usually have a bias which affects their theories and reports.

We Can Forgive Them If We Like Them But Not If We Don't.

Back in the day we loved many of our presidents and were measured in our response to their misdeeds. 

We loved JFK and wept when we heard that he was dead. Many of us knew that he was seeing a lot of women and started an affair with a teenage summer intern, and we forgave him. 

When Nixon became President, we decided that we didn't like him and wanted him out, and wished him the worst. When many of us heard about Watergate, we were hoping (many of us on the Left don't pray) that he would leave office and fortunately for us he did.

Many loved Reagan. He was a charismatic, optimistic leader who led us out of a severe fiscal problems of mortgage rates at 16%, high unemployment and he got our American hostages released by Iran. But he made the rich richer by dramatically lowering their tax rate. He was a conservative, but many of us still appreciated him.

We liked Bill Clinton who was charming and bright. When we heard that he had had a 12 year long extramarital affair with a Little Rock celebrity, Gennifer Flowers, he and Hillary denied it but he had to finally acknowledge that it was true after tapes of them were revealed. We forgave him - good old boys will be boys. The same happened when accused of the sexual assault in Little Rock of Paula Jones. The Clintons denied the accusations, blaming the right for it. He later confessed to it and paid Paula $850,000. Then he was said to have had sex in the Oval Office with a 22 years old intern. He denied it while Hillary called her a bimbo not to be believed. He lied about it, but confessed that it was true when the intern produced a stained blue dress that had his DNA. But we still like him, but not so much his wife who the vast majority believe is dishonest. She went on to say in 2016 "When a woman says she was raped, believe her." But she hadn't.

Many of Americans generally liked George II, even though his administration was a disaster. He cut taxes for the rich causing a budget deficit leading to huge job losses and did not respond to warnings about an imminent terrorist attack on us with airplanes before 9/11. But he was gracious when visiting the site of the crash that killed almost 3,000 people. He got us into a pointless war in Iraq costing trillions of our taxes dollars. Iraq is still in chaos and ISIS was born in the midst of the disorder. The invasion gave birth to the "Arab Spring" with people from other Middle East countries seeing one dictator brought down thinking they can topple theirs and they did, sending their countries into turmoil. In Syria, a few hundred thousand Syrians protested the government and insisted that Assad step down. The resistance has been fighting for seven years. Their cities have been bombed and destroyed and more than 500,000 Syrians have lost their lives while even more lost their homes and were forced to flee and Assad is still in power. We didn't hate George II, we blamed his advisors, especially the evil Cheney and his team. By the time he left office, the economy was in shambles, businesses were going bankrupt, and people were losing their homes because of the rising unemployment. We still think that he was a nice, just a little over his head.

We elected Barack Obama who we liked. We still do. He saved the auto industry and the economy. He ensured that we got all the money that we gave to banks and businesses in the weak economy, plus interest. He reduced our troops in Afghanistan fighting another pointless war. He did the same in Iraq. He had great ideas like raising the minimum wage and making community college free. This is a much better idea than Bernie's free four year college tuition for everyone.

We forgive him for fanning the flames of racial conflict. He supported Black Lives Matter, which many believe is a a racist and anti police group that was started under the mistaken impression that a young 6'5" recent high school football player was unarmed and had his hands up when shot by a police officer. That turned out to be untrue. 

We believed when he said that diversity made this country great. . Mr. Obama was a globalist with the ultimate goal of ending nations and having one great global economy. 

While we forgive him his errors, we don't forgive his first Secretary of State. She further damaged our relationship with Russia and was a cheerleader for Muslims who wanted to overthrow their government. While we helped kill the leader of Libya, we helped the nation become disorganized and deadly. She ignored pleas for more security at our embassy in Bengazi and then lied about the death of four, including the Ambassador, saying it was a spontaneous attack that could not have been anticipated.

We now have our 45th President. We realized immediately that we didn't like him. He was insulting, rude, and a narcissist who doesn't always get his facts straight or find less provocative ways of expressing himself. He wanted to build a wall and promised that Mexico will pay for it. He said that some illegals are murderers, rapists, drug smugglers and criminals of a different stripe. We didn't like that. He could have said we want to stop illegal immigration by building a wall. He could have cited the billions we spend each year on illegal immigration and didn't mention that those who work illegally are taking jobs away from some Americans of African or Latin American heritage, who need the jobs most. 

We ignore many of his accomplishments because we don't like him and want him to fail even if it hurts the country. He has appointed an excellent Supreme Court justice, simplified the tax code eliminating most itemized deductions, lowered tax brackets and increased the standard deduction. It will save most of us hundreds or thousands each year. He lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% stimulating hiring and expansion while bringing businesses back to America or getting them to stay here.

He did not micro manage the military in its decisions in Iraq and Afghanistan and in our fight against ISIS. He passed a budget that both parties approved of. When he threatened North Korea, we thought him mad. While previous presidents complained about Korea, they never did enough to stop the North from making missiles and nuclear war heads. Trump got all nations to stop doing business with the country and promised to annihilate the country if a missile lands on American soil. North Korea capitulated and signed an agreement with Trump to denuclearize. Many of us hope that Trump does not get the Nobel Peace Prize for that. 

When he threatened tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada, the EU and especially China, we were worried. They are now willing to change their unfair trade practices and our steel and aluminum businesses are now flourishing. His predecessors complained about unfair trade policies but they did nothing about it. 

He withdrew from the Iran agreement since they are still making missiles and enriching uranium. They were given $100 billion in the agreement which gave them money to fight in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. 

He reduced the contribution we make to NATO and the U.N. We were paying 25% of these budgets to protect Europe or to vote on biased and/or meaningless gestures in the U.N. Their votes on Israel, Syria or the Russian invasion of Crimea come to mind.

While in office the stock market has gone up 10,000 points and unemployment rates are down to 3.8%, the lowest in at least 18 years. Unemployment numbers are also going down to record lows for minorities and summer youth as Trump helped create more jobs.

He began work on changing, improving the failed ACA. He is getting drug companies  to reduce the cost of expensive drugs.

His slogan was America and Americans first. What country doesn't feel the same? But we blamed him for going against globalism which ultimately makes open borders and even more diversity, changing our culture, values, beliefs and traditions - country.  

What will we think if he accomplishes all of these improvements? If North Korea destroys its nuclear program; if Iran agrees to changes in the agreement; if China and the EU level the trade playing field; if the stock market keeps going higher; if we find that we are paying much less in taxes; if unemployment goes even lower to below 3.8% when 5.5% is considered full employment. If he is able to reform the ACA and have prescription costs for life saving drugs Would we ever appreciate his work? No! We don't like him and neither does the entire mainstream media (not including the Wall Street Journal). They can't all be wrong.

Now many of us are hoping that something will come of this two year investigation of collusion with the Russians. When first claimed by HRC, it was ridiculed, even by the New York Times, and it is still ridiculous. It has still not been proven, but the Special Prosecutor is determined to find something on Trump, if only to avenge the firing of his good friend and successor.

Can we all continue to dislike him regardless of his accomplishments? Yes, always.

Is Separate Not Equal?

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that separate schools based on race were not, could not, be equal. 

The issue was unfair educational opportunity for Americans of African or Latin American heritage. The most famous confrontation was when the governor of Arkansas would not let a few black students enter and attend the all-white Central High. President Eisenhower sent federal troops to escort these brave souls to class. Very soon more blacks came and more whites left. Private schools were springing up in Little Rock. Today Central High is now more than 60% black and 29% white.  

Several years ago, a Harvard educator named Canada, started a school in Harlem. It was mainly for black students. They wore school uniforms and had longer school years. They were separate but weren't they equal? Schools like his are starting in other parts of the country with the goal of giving black students in a black school with black teachers to address this population's special social and educational needs. The waiting list of parents wanting to enroll their children is usually quite long.

There are some excellent black universities. Are their students losing out?

This court decision led to the imposition of affirmative action programs. Students in public schools were bused to far away locations, usually affluent neighborhoods for the poor, while white students were bused into poor neighborhoods. Colleges had to set up affirmative action policies with quotas which gave applicants of a protected class much more chance of getting in. Lawsuits were filed by some white applicants and the court ruled that these programs unfairly discriminated against those in neither protected class.

This led to a new rational. Colleges weren't discriminating to comply with affirmative action, they were making their schools more diverse. Diversity became more important than school standards, grade point averages, SAT scores, study habits and potential. 

Our former President, a globalist, embraced the notion of the value of diversity. He felt that everything should have a variety of people from different backgrounds, even if they're from different countries and cultures. He expanded immigration, legal, and illegal.

What about diversity in professional sports? How many Latinos, Asians or Jews are in the NFL and NBA?  Are these sports harmed by not having a diverse population?  Professional sports teams want to get the best athletes no matter what their cultural background.

Now Asian applicants to Harvard are suing saying that Harvard discriminates against them and for some other minorities. A study showed that a black candidate is many times more likely to get in than an Asian, though the Asian applicants had much better grades and scores.

A report that was in the Wall Street journal, and probably not in the mainstream media, reported that Asians with similar scores as blacks have a 20+% chance of being accepted while a person of African heritage has a 95%. The media rather said that Asians are only 5% of American residents but are enrolled about 20%. Here again we have quotas to justify unfair treatment. If the top Harvard 40% of applicants are Asian then they should admitted. 

So what?

The result has been a decline in educational standards meaning that college grads are less educated and less prepared for a successful future. A college degree today is equal to what a high school diploma was 50 years ago. Half of all college graduates work at jobs that do not require a degree. This decline is also seen in high school education with many graduates not educated enough to go to college before taking several remedial courses to get an inferior education in college as well, since standards have been lowered.

You might ask, what's wrong with lower educational standards?

It makes a country's population that doesn't work well or think well.  That leads to being less able to make intelligent consumer and political decisions. Unable to think deeply means that people will act out of emotion rather than intellect. We become driven by a herd/ heard mentality. If we hear that the group we like approves of something or someone, we do too. 

The irony is that diversity is unavoidable. Some of us are smart, some are very attractive. Some are tall some are short, some are fat and some are skinny. Look at the diversity in love and career preferences. How many men are in love with the same woman, three out of 120 million American men? How many of us wanted to be a lawyer, a dentist, a heart surgeon, a philosophy professor, or a waiter, plumber, farmer, businessman, police officer, a firefighter or an airline steward? Some of us did; and we work in those fields. But the vast majority of us wouldn't think to do the other jobs or professions. Why? Because we are so diverse.


So is forced diversity needed or helpful?