Comments about ‘In our opinion: The freedom to prosper’

One thing for sure, prosperity comes from individual hard work and dedication NOT from government forcing successful individuals to pay more taxes to allow the lazies to continue to be couch potatoes.

the Pew report did not find that people are earning more. It found that household income is higher. This is due to the fact the many more women work today than did so earlier. It is also because Americans are working more hours than they did before. Earnings for men peaked in 1973 and have steadily declining ever since. Unless you are part of the hyper rich that is.

I was surprised and gratified that you recogonize the stagnation of real wages since the 1970's as a major source of our economic problems.

Brookings Institution’s Ron Haskins said, “My Brookings colleague Isabel Sawhill and I conducted an analysis based on Census Bureau data on a representative sample of Americans. We asked the data to tell us how adult Americans were doing if they followed three elementary norms of growing up in a modern society: finish high school, get a full-time job, and wait until age 21 and get married before having children. The results were astounding: young adults who followed all three norms had a 2 percent chance of winding up in poverty and a 74 percent chance of winding up in the middle class (defined as earning roughly $50,000 or more). By contrast, young adults who violated all three norms had a 76 percent chance of winding up in poverty and a 7 percent chance of winding up in the middle class.”
Higher Black illegitimacy percentages largely explains their higher rates of poverty; whites are trending in that direction in the USA and might someday catch up, and are already there in England. Even though American minorities are generally poorer than whites, minorities following these 3 rules are just as well off as whites.

The "Freedom to Prosper" is often dependent on an person's access to advantage achieved by circumstances of birth. Mitt Romney is and example of that. Born into a wealthy and powerful family, he enjoyed educational opportunities and personal and professional connections that most will never enjoy.

Conversely, President Obama is living proof the the American Dream. Born with about every disadvantage possible. Poor, black, single mother, nonetheless he has found success that few, including the most advantaged, we ever find. His eventual success was only possible because he was born into a great country willing to accept and assist those born to disadvantage.

I hope that Obama's country will still be here for the next generation. But there are those that seem not to want that anymore. The argue that government has no role to play in leveling the economic and social playing field, that regardless of circumstance every man and woman are pretty much on their own. If we don't reject that selfish ideology we will surely end up being just what we are becoming, a state ruled by an elite wealthy minority with a primal agenda to maintain power and control by any means necessary.

Search for George Soros and the Pew Charitable Trust.

The medieval Catholic Church and contemporary Islam argue against usury, i.e. charging money for moeny as a sin and a perversion. In contemporary capitalism, they may have their vinidication. Twenty perceont of our GDP is accounted for, not by making useful things, but by making money from money (financial "products" of various types - largely incomprehensible). This has of oourse accentuated the top heavy distribution of wealth because American capitalism is no longer interested in using American labor (why should they be when they can make money from money?). It was much like this in 1929. Because of the rise of the crooked financial "industry" (not just American, consider the LIBOR crisis), capitalism is rotten to the core. What will we replace it with? Some sort of socialist alternative must be kept alive, though rest assured I don't want a Soviet style socialism. As an aside I wonder if Mitt remembers the socialist parts of his forebears as they were chased back and forth across the Mexican border? If he had enough guts he could be useful.

I am at the end of my life, so I joined the Socialist Party - USA to keep an alternative open.

I appreciate the editorial, but am troubled that it completely ignores the Marxist and regulatory focus of Obama and the Democrats. This president is hostile to success, hostile to capitalism, hostile to individual liberty, hostile to everything that has historically allowed Americans to succeed. There is a reason we are stuck in this silly recession--because the president of the United States has made sure the recession stays. This is his way of expanding the federal government, expanding regulation, and expanding taxes and government control. To quote Ronald Reagan, "government is the problem." Indeed it is, and I'm disappointed this editorial paints a picture that Obama and Romney are both equally guilty of something, although it doesn't say what.

"...There is a reason we are stuck in this silly recession--because the president of the United States has made sure the recession stays...".

All by himself?

A Congress hovering around a 10% approval rating bears no responsibility?

A Republican led House since 2010 shares no responsibility?

OK.

With Mitt the expert job creator as your president,

(half of the country will never accept him as the POTUS and half of his own party feels the same way having only voted for him as the lesser of two evils)

We should expect 4.7% unemployment by 4/21/13.

90 days should be more than enough time for an expert.

Why dumb-down expectations for an expert?

Mitt will be receiving an economy that is not losing 750,000 jobs per/mth.

Mitt will receive an economy that has trillions sitiing on the sideline just waiting to be invested.

Mitt has promised he will repeal the ACA, his first day in office.

Mitt has promised he will repeal all regulations that get in the way of making lots of money.

No apologies.

No excuses.

"...Politics...the second oldest profession....a very close resemblance to the first...".
Ronald Reagan

Many different organizations consistently rank the U.S. in the top 5 in the world for ease of doing business.

An absence of business regulation is not only not good for consumers, it isn't good for businesses either. For example, what happens when food is contaminated? Does it hurt only the grower/processor/producer where the contaminated food/toy/etc came from? No. It hurts all who produce the same product. Does ineffective regulation of our banking and financial institutions and subsequent failures make it easier or harder to conduct business?

The key is finding balance. Most people would agree that we don't want total govt. control/regulation or its opposite--no govt. regulation. We can't seem to agree where we are on the spectrum or where we should be on the spectrum between the two extremes. On the other hand, maybe we could agree, if all the political labels were stripped aside.

Good for you ljeppson. Something does have to change drasticly. I firmly believe that the US will have an uprising at some point when the inequality is no longer tolerable. We are all ready in a place whre unemployment can't go down drasticly because there are only two classes of jobs being created. The first are jobs that are on the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Jobs that don't support a normal life. Second are jobs at the top of the socionomic ladder and are extremely highly skilled. Unless we expand the second category to reach further down ladder (by creating new industries)the job situation juxaposed against the wealth and inequality creating industries will leave millions without alternatives.

By comparing the income of Americans in their 40s with that of their parents at the same age in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the report shows that most Americans (84 percent) earn more than their parents in absolute, inflation-adjusted terms.

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So let's do a fair comparison.

In 1974
My Dad had High School Diploma, and made $40K a year.

We had a 2000 sq ft house,
1 car (station wagon) a pick-up truck and a camper.
We had 2 phones - but 1 line...land line.
1 color TV, and a B&W.
No computer, No internet,
My Mom made us sack lunches for school.
My college tuition at the Univeristy of Utah was $168 a quater for 12-18 credit hours.
Gas was 57 cents a gallon.

=================

2012

I have a college degree and 27 years career experience,
I make $50+K a year,
we have a 35 year old 2200 sq ft house
2 older cars, 1997 being the newest.
Gas hovers near $4 a gal.

The rich have gotten richer,
The poor have gotten poorer.

Occupy WallStreet is right.
The 1% have more.

THE EXPERIENCE OF MANKIND has shown that the people of communities and nations among whom wealth is the most equally distributed, enjoy the largest degree of liberty, are the least exposed to tyranny and oppression...

ONE OF THE GREAT EVILS with which our own nation is menaced at the present time is the wonderful growth of wealth in the hands of a comparatively few individuals. The very liberties for which our fathers fought for … are endangered by the monstrous power which this accumulation of wealth gives to a few individuals and a few powerful corporations... If this evil should not be checked, and measures not taken to prevent the continued enormous growth of riches among the class already rich, and the painful increase of destitution and want among the poor, the nation is likely to be overtaken by disaster; for, according to history, such a tendency among nations once powerful was the sure precursor of ruin.

===============

LDS 1st Presidency --
Proclamation on the Economy

Last comment ---

Our friends and allies to the North -
Canada.

Socialist,
Better Re-Distribution of Wealth,
Single Payer healthcare,
Legalized marijuana,
Higher taxes,
Green Technologies,
Liberal immigration policies,
Nationalized Oil industries,
More restrictive Guns laws,

one, and on, and on....

Canadians [as well as most Europeans and Asians] are now wealthier than Americans.

With the lone wxcept to that nagging uber-wealthy 1% of Americans,
Who just keep widening that gap further and further.

FYI -
Mitt Romney, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity?
Ya, part of that 1% -- and they're NEVER going to openenly admit to their fawning followers in the ditches and trenches.

You know, I have to scratch my head when Freedom somehow come down to equating to wealth. I sit right now in a small town in Costa Rica, with people who don't enjoy the type of "freedom" most refer to here. If there freedom were measured in financial terms, these people would not be considered free what so ever. But as a people, these people are some of the most free people I have come to know - because they are fee of all the traps of materialism. They don't need things to be happy. They don't need to have wealth to feel free.

I think our society has come to value wealth as a measure of someones worth far too much. Money and the quest for it hardly equate to freedom. That is why I love my trips down here, it reminds me what freedom really is. Free from crime. Free from persecution. Free to be who you are. Not being dictated by others what you should be. That is free. And none of them are contingent on financial wealth.

I say this as one who is not part of the 1 or 2 percent, but easily the 5 percent.

Yes, many of you are confusing freedom with freedom from paying any taxes, freedom from any sacrifice, freedom to buy anything without the moral baggage of its source or consequences, freedom from stewardship for the planet, and ultimately freedom from truth, because knowing that something is true or right and acting upon it are different politics.

Dumprake. Reagan was wrong when he said that "Government is the Problem". Sometimes it certainly can be, but more often government offers the only reasonable solution. That's why we have a government after all. When a problem exists that the free market for one reason or other either can't or won't solve, then the Government may be the only reasonable solution.

You need to look at why you have this anti government attitude. Let me suggest that you have it at least in part because you have internalized the propaganda of those who want to weaken public support government for their own selfish purposes. For example, why does Wall Street fight regulation? Since the presidency of Reagan, Wall Street and other corporate interests have enjoyed much less federal regulation. And what was the result? Enron, World Com, Near collapse on Wall Street, and rising disparity in the distribution of wealth leading to an economically weaker middle class.

When government is weak, the forces of corporate fascism have the upper hand because government becomes incompetent to check their excess. When that happens, a few benefit at the expenses of many.

Canadians just surpassed Americans in personal wealth per household.

$363,202, vs $319,970 U.S. average.

I'm still waiting for my 40 acres to trickle down.

The Freedom to prosper dies with the this election unless Mitt Romney wins. There is no freedom to prosper in socialism. Barack decides when you have "made enough money" and when to redistribute that wealth for so-called "social justice" handouts. Freedom is frowned upon in all socialistic societies ... considered dangerous to the "collective good". America is full of socialists - if the count is greater than 50% then forget the American dream because all it will be is a memory and nothing more.