Started by linate
Both parties thought the financial system needed bailed out. I dont care what either party thought about it. The experts which I know you dont care about thought our economy could collapse if we didn't bail them out. But whatever you feel in your gut, I guess, since that seems to be how you think through policy and politics
I don't listen to rich experts looking out for their own interests. That's the big difference. They will do it again, knowing there are no downsides. The concern here isn’t a simple: “experts are evil.” It’s that financial incentive structures do matter. If the lesson learned in 2008 was “the government will step in to prevent collapse,” then a similar risk will build again. Capitalism that isn't allowed to fail is worse than communism because it rewards failure. Communism doesn't have that kind of mechanism; when it fails, there is no reward.
Thanks for agreeing with my point on 5-year plan systems.
Your propensity for self delusion is very entertaining.
—>Why do all the experts disagree with you and say there's no significant fraud?
I didn't make that claim; you are arguing with the air.
The irony…
Those aren’t my words, that is from post #8 written by linate, so perhaps you should tell that to him.
How has that objectively worked out in your "progressive states" over the past 5 decades....
I love the way right wingers pretend every state operates in a vacuum, as if national policy and circumstances has nothing to do with the broader story we are seeing play out.
The wealth gap is wider in most blue states because that’s where the big cities are, which is where the rich people flock to. No Billionaire wants to live in West Virginia. But if the policies in these places gets too progressive, they will just relocate for tax purposes to states like Florida who have no income taxes to save themselves a few million each year, even while spending much of their time on those big cities. That’s why this needs to be dealt with at the federal level.
So either heavy government intervention does not function the way you claim… or concentrated power and regulatory capture happen inside progressive frameworks too.
I never said concentrated power and regulatory capture don’t happen under progressive frameworks, you made that up, as usual.
All I said is that it is a fact that in a capitalistic society, with greater wealth comes greater power and influence, resulting in a greater ability to increase one’s wealth. That’s not debatable.
So given that wealth begets wealth, on a macro level, without an intervening force the wealth gap will only increase, which is exactly what we and every other large democracy on earth consistently see.
And the only entity that has the power to intervene is government.
This means that if your core value is less government intervention in economic matters, then your core value is necessarily tied to expanding the wealth gap as opposed to setting the stage for a thriving middle class. You cannot have both.
So pick one, and say it out loud.
Who benefits? People who already own scarce assets, property owners, equity holders, and investment corporations.
Who gets squeezed?
Renters.
First-time buyers.
New entrants.
The middle class.
So property owners win when the government tells them they are not allowed to charge unreasonably high rates? Wow, that’s news to them.
There is absolutely no evidence that the types of examples you listed are the drivers of the wealth gap. You’re engaging in a correlation/causation fallacy.
Moreover, your argument here is largely irrelevant. There are plenty of progressive ideas I can look at and say are terrible, like Kamala Harris’s $30k credit for first time home buyers, and don’t even get me started on the over saturation of affordable housing, which jacks up my rent because I make too much to qualify so I have to watch as people who make way less than me are able to afford better housing than I can.
We can cherry pick whatever policies we want and talk about unintended consequences all day, that doesn’t change the fact of everything else I said about wealth begetting wealth being logically impenetrable. Not liking some ideas doesn’t mean there aren’t better ones, but if we can’t even agree on what the core problem is we’ll never solve them, and that is exactly where we are.
So pick one, and say it out loud.
Thanks for agreeing exactly why, after 50 years of interventionism, the objective result with your blue states is increased wealth inequality over 50 years, not decreased as advertised. I particularly liked your agreement with market distortions, and not some hamfisted hur-durr explanation about rich people loving a tribe or state or something like that being responsible for the increases in wealth inequality over 50 years of market interventionism.
Thoughts?
The short answer is: it depends on how you measure inequality, but the data generally shows that **economic inequality (income and wealth gaps) tends to be higher in many “red” states**, though with some important nuances. Let me break it down carefully.
---
### 1. **Income Inequality**
* A common measure is the **Gini coefficient** (0 = perfect equality, 1 = maximum inequality).
* **Red states** (e.g., Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas) often have **higher income inequality**, partly because:
* Lower taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
* Lower minimum wages.
* Less progressive taxation overall.
* **Blue states** (e.g., California, New York, Massachusetts) often have **more redistributive policies** (higher income taxes, stronger social programs), which reduce inequality a bit, though some still have high inequality due to high cost-of-living urban areas.
---
### 2. **Wealth Inequality**
* Wealth inequality (assets minus debts) is **very high in many blue states** because:
* High housing prices and concentrations of wealthy professionals drive up net worth for the rich.
* But at the same time, **red states often have a large population with very low wealth**, widening the gap overall.
---
### 3. **Poverty and Median Income**
* **Red states tend to have higher poverty rates** and lower median incomes.
* **Blue states tend to have higher median incomes**, but the gap between the super-rich and middle/lower class can be extreme in urban areas like NYC or San Francisco.
---
### 4. **Policy Effects**
* **Red states:** lower taxes, less social spending → more bottom-end poverty, higher relative inequality.
* **Blue states:** higher taxes, stronger safety nets → lower poverty and less bottom-end inequality, but high cost of living can mask that.
---
### ✅ **Summary**
* **Bottom-line income inequality:** typically worse in red states.
* **Top-end wealth concentration:** some blue states have extremely wealthy populations, so the gap can look huge in dollar terms, but social programs mitigate extreme poverty.
* **Overall societal impact:** red states tend to have a larger share of people struggling at the bottom, while blue states tend to concentrate wealth at the top but lift the bottom more effectively.
---
Lol, AI slop wars...
First, zoom out: inequality is overwhelmingly an urban phenomenon. The biggest dispersion of income and wealth happens in dense metro areas tied to finance, tech, media, and global capital — not in rural states voting red.
Second, if you rank U.S. metropolitan areas by Gini coefficient, the highest inequality metros are overwhelmingly large blue cities: New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Boston, Chicago, Washington D.C., Atlanta. The common denominator isn’t party control — it’s global-city status.
Third, Manhattan alone has a higher Gini than most entire red states. That tells you the dispersion inside blue urban cores dwarfs rural dispersion in magnitude.
Fourth, San Francisco–Oakland routinely ranks near the top in metro income inequality. Massive tech wealth next to low-income service labor drives extreme spread.
Fifth, Los Angeles shows one of the widest 90th-to-10th percentile income ratios in the country. That’s structural polarization — not rural conservatism.
Sixth, New York City has billionaires concentrated in a few ZIP codes while public housing projects exist within miles. That spatial inequality is measurable in census tract data.
Seventh, Boston and Washington D.C. both rank high in income dispersion due to elite professional classes alongside lower-income immigrant populations.
Eighth, Miami — a blue-leaning urban core — consistently shows one of the highest Gini scores among large metros.
Ninth, when measuring top 1% income share, major blue cities dominate the list. High-end capital markets and tech equity compensation inflate the top.
Tenth, wealth inequality — measured by net worth dispersion — is most extreme in housing markets where asset appreciation has exploded. That’s San Francisco, Seattle, NYC, Boston, LA — overwhelmingly blue urban centers.
Now let’s stack additional metrics:
Eleventh, housing price-to-income ratios are dramatically higher in blue coastal metros. When homeownership becomes inaccessible to middle earners, wealth gaps widen structurally.
Twelfth, rent burden rates (percent of income spent on rent) are highest in blue metros. Lower-income households in these cities spend a much larger share of income on housing than counterparts in red metros.
Thirteenth, asset ownership concentration is more skewed in high-cost urban centers because equity compensation (RSUs, stock options) clusters in tech and finance hubs.
Fourteenth, income polarization indexes (measuring shrinkage of middle-income households) show sharper middle-class erosion in large coastal cities than in many mid-sized red metros.
Fifteenth, cost-adjusted disposable income often compresses inequality in red metros because lower housing costs raise real purchasing power for middle-income households.
Sixteenth, interquartile income range (IQR) spreads are wider in large blue metros due to simultaneous presence of ultra-high earners and low-wage service labor.
Seventeenth, property tax base concentration in blue cities reveals extreme valuation differences between luxury districts and working-class neighborhoods.
Eighteenth, venture capital distribution is heavily concentrated in blue metros. When startup wealth events occur, they spike local inequality metrics dramatically.
Nineteenth, homelessness rates, which often correlate with housing-driven inequality, are significantly higher per capita in major blue coastal cities than in most red metros.
Twentieth, when looking at IRS SOI data by ZIP code, income variance inside major blue cities far exceeds variance inside most red-leaning metro regions.
Twenty-first, rural red metros often show lower inequality simply because incomes cluster more tightly around modest medians — less dispersion at both extremes.
Twenty-second, blue cities attract both global wealth and low-income migration simultaneously. That dual inflow mechanically expands dispersion.
Twenty-third, in many red metros, absence of extreme capital inflows limits top-end explosion — which lowers measured inequality even if median incomes are lower.
Twenty-fourth, federal redistribution policies apply nationally, yet extreme metro inequality persists most intensely in global blue hubs. That suggests urban structure matters more than state party control.
Twenty-fifth, even within red states like Texas, the highest inequality zones are Austin, Dallas, Houston — urban, blue-leaning cores.
Twenty-sixth, the same pattern appears in Georgia: rural areas show lower dispersion; Atlanta shows high inequality.
Twenty-seventh, North Carolina: rural counties lower dispersion; Charlotte and Raleigh higher dispersion.
Twenty-eighth, when economists isolate urban density as a variable, density correlates more strongly with inequality than party governance.
Twenty-ninth, capital concentration follows agglomeration economics — high-skill industries cluster, wages diverge, asset prices inflate. That’s city-driven, not ballot-driven.
Thirtieth, so the “red states worse inequality” narrative collapses once you disaggregate to the metro level. Inequality is primarily a feature of globalized blue urban centers, not rural conservative regions.
If someone wants to argue about poverty levels, that’s a separate discussion. But on dispersion metrics — income spread, wealth concentration, housing inequality, top-share concentration — the most extreme numbers sit inside major blue cities. And using a useless filter such as "it depends on how you measure it" is only you screaming into your own ear.
First, redefining inequality mid-argument is like turning your own echo into evidence. If the definition shifts depending on which political geography you’re defending, you’re not measuring reality — you’re sculpting it.
Second, when someone says “it depends how you measure inequality” and then proceeds to choose the measurement that confirms their prior, that’s not nuance. That’s calibration to narrative.
Third, if inequality is framed only as post-tax income dispersion, you erase asset inflation. If it’s framed only as poverty rates, you erase top-end concentration. If it’s framed as nominal dollars, you ignore purchasing power. Selective framing is not neutral.
Fourth, screaming into the wind just to hear your own voice is what happens when metrics become moral theater. The number isn’t the goal — the confirmation is.
Fifth, over fifty years, the largest blue urban centers have experienced rising inequality despite expanding social programs. That should at least complicate the “more intervention = less inequality” story.
Sixth, one reason: asset inflation. Since the 1970s, monetary policy, financialization, and global capital flows have dramatically inflated equities and real estate. Blue cities host those asset markets. Intervention didn’t stop capital concentration — it often amplified it.
Seventh, zoning and land-use regulation in many blue cities has constrained housing supply. When demand rises and supply is artificially tight, prices explode. That widens wealth gaps mechanically.
Eighth, agglomeration economics. High-skill industries cluster. When tech and finance concentrate in cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, the wage distribution stretches. Government intervention didn’t create clustering, but it didn’t prevent it either.
Ninth, credential inflation. Blue cities often anchor elite universities and knowledge economies. That produces extreme wage premiums for specialized labor while service sectors remain low-wage.
Tenth, progressive tax policy can compress disposable income inequality somewhat, but it does little to reverse structural asset inequality. Capital appreciation outpaces redistribution.
Eleventh, welfare expansion reduces extreme poverty but doesn’t eliminate dispersion between median earners and equity-rich households.
Twelfth, globalization disproportionately benefits port cities and financial hubs. Blue cities are tied into global capital circuits. That integration widens top-end income share.
Thirteenth, venture capital ecosystems generate outsized windfalls for a small subset of founders and early employees. That kind of wealth event did not exist at scale in 1970. It’s now common in blue metros.
Fourteenth, regulatory barriers to entry in certain industries protect incumbents. That can entrench wealth rather than diffuse it.
Fifteenth, property-based tax systems reward long-term homeowners while renters fall further behind as prices climb.
Sixteenth, federal monetary policy has favored asset holders for decades. Blue cities have more asset holders at scale. That compounds concentration.
Seventeenth, immigration flows into global cities create large low-income labor pools alongside high-income professional classes. That mechanically widens the bottom-to-top gap.
Eighteenth, public-sector employment growth stabilizes incomes but does not generate equity wealth. Private capital accumulation still dominates inequality metrics.
Nineteenth, social safety nets prevent collapse but do not flatten the distribution curve created by financial markets.
Twentieth, so if inequality rises for fifty years in intervention-heavy cities, the honest response isn’t to redefine the metric — it’s to ask whether structural capital dynamics overpower redistribution tools.
Twenty-first, redefining inequality to defend governance is like adjusting the thermometer to avoid admitting it’s cold.
Twenty-second, if the policy thesis is “intervention reduces inequality,” but the inequality line keeps climbing in intervention-dense cities, either the intervention is insufficient, misdirected, or the mechanism misunderstood.
Twenty-third, it’s possible to reduce absolute deprivation while increasing dispersion. Those are different phenomena. Conflating them confuses debate.
Twenty-fourth, if asset appreciation is the dominant inequality driver, then wage-focused redistribution won’t fully address it.
Twenty-fifth, screaming about Gini coefficients without addressing housing supply, capital markets, zoning, and asset bubbles is performative.
Twenty-sixth, urban inequality is as much about capital structure as it is about party ideology.
Twenty-seventh, when inequality discussions ignore purchasing power differences between regions, they become abstract rather than lived.
Twenty-eighth, if a city produces both billionaires and homelessness at scale, that is a structural economic pattern — not just a partisan talking point.
Twenty-ninth, measuring inequality honestly requires holding multiple metrics at once. Selecting only the ones that flatter your political tribe is self-soothing.
Thirtieth, and if after fifty years of intervention-heavy governance the dispersion curve remains steep, maybe the problem isn’t the measurement. Maybe it’s that capital, housing, and global flows are more powerful than local redistribution.
If after fifty years of intervention-heavy governance, the inequality curve in major blue cities keeps steepening, then the honest question isn’t whether the metric is flawed. It’s whether the intervention structure itself is interacting with market forces in ways that amplify dispersion.
Over time, large welfare states alter migration incentives. High-benefit urban centers attract low-income populations seeking services, housing support, and opportunity. That inflow expands the bottom of the income distribution numerically, increasing measured dispersion even if individual conditions improve relative to origin regions.
At the same time, benefit cliffs create marginal tax traps. When additional earnings reduce eligibility for assistance, the effective marginal rate on upward movement is steep. That doesn’t mean people are lazy — it means incentive gradients matter.
Layer on zoning constraints and land-use regulations that artificially restrict housing supply. Limited supply in high-demand cities drives asset prices upward. That disproportionately benefits property owners and early entrants while locking out new participants.
Financialization compounds this. Ultra-wealthy actors operate in global capital markets. They arbitrage regulatory complexity, exploit niche tax structures, deploy capital across borders, and access investment vehicles unavailable to ordinary earners. High-regulation environments raise barriers to entry, which incumbents can navigate more easily than small competitors.
Add network effects from tech and finance clustering. When equity-based compensation dominates compensation structures, wealth dispersion accelerates. A small number of IPO or liquidity events can shift a metro’s wealth curve dramatically.
Global capital inflows into “safe” blue metros inflate commercial and residential real estate. That’s not local policy alone — but local policy can restrict supply, turning demand into price escalation instead of expansion.
Meanwhile, heavy regulatory frameworks suppress small business formation through compliance costs. Large firms absorb those costs more easily. That concentrates market power and profits.
So the 50-year pattern looks like this:
Redistribution and welfare stabilize and flatten out the bottom.
Housing scarcity inflates assets.
Regulation advantages incumbents.
Global capital concentrates at the top.
Migration expands the lower-income base.
Voila, a recipe for increasing wealth inequality.
The result is a widening dispersion curve, not despite intervention, but shaped by how intervention interacts with capital dynamics.
That’s the argument. Not that Democrat or Republican social programs “cause poverty.” Not that redistribution is evil. But that incentive layers, migration flows, housing constraints, and financial asymmetries combine in ways that preserve or even increase inequality over long horizons.
That’s the structural thesis. Harder to dismiss than tribal political slogans.
Thanks for agreeing exactly why, after 50 years of interventionism, the objective result with your blue states is increased wealth inequality over 50 years, not decreased as advertised.
I already refuted your uninformed blue state argument and explained to you step by step by step why the wealth gap will never be solved without government intervention.
So did you acknowledge my points or explain where they are wrong? No, of course not. You just pretend that instead of refuting your arguments (which I did) that I was actually agreeing with them.
You’re entirely too stupid to talk too.
I already refuted your uninformed blue state argument and explained to you step by step by step why the wealth gap will never be solved without government intervention.
You mean "has gotten worse over 50+ years in places with government intervention."
not "is getting solved over 50+ years in places with government intervention."
No metric shows that it "is getting solved" over the past 50+ years with increasing government intervention.
It's actually much worse today than 1970. You can chant the political slogans your tribal leaders push, but the data doesn't track the slogans.
For New York City (household income Gini):
1970: roughly 0.43–0.45 (estimates vary slightly by dataset)
2020: roughly 0.54–0.55
NYC has consistently ranked as one of the most unequal large cities in the United States.
For perspective:
• U.S. overall (2020): ~0.49
• NYC (2020): ~0.54–0.55
• Manhattan alone: even higher (~0.60+ in some years)
It's okay if you get more joy from chanting political slogans, as data is quite boring to look at.
The objective result with your blue states is increased wealth inequality over 50 years, not decreased as advertised.
Yes, now we agree.
I do acknowledge considering both our ai slop that the rabbit hole goes deep and its over my head how to parse it all. I will say tho that I do believe people in red political areas have more discretionary income than blue areas. But with that said, blue areas are often considered more desirable places to live so ya get what ya pay for
To be fair, it wasn't you who was spouting nonsense about how government interventionism has had such a great track record in your country over the past 50 years.
You just need to be careful, just because someone is in your tribe does NOT mean you should just nod along without stopping to think about the facts. Sometimes it's actually okay to push back. And if it's not OK to push back, that's a good sign your tribe is a cult.
The data on New York City is really unrefutable. The GINI numbers are either real or they are not.
Is that the result of Trump’s tax fraud. He has been ripping off New York with his tax fraud for decades.
Pro choice is the cop out of difficult choices.
Pro Life owns that its forcing a pregnant feme human to not slaughter a human that is drainjng her of resources and may even ruin her career.
It is Baptists etc who just want to force that. Catholics in contrast wish to set up safety nets for the birthed child. Nunneries adopting girls, male clergy adopting boys (however these have at times resulted in abuses).
The US is a definitively secular nation, founded on complete separation of the State and religion. The Left Wing of US realise this but don't realise that pure freedom requires as low tax and free access to guns as possible. The Right Wing of US don't realise that secular pure freedom means the LGBTQ+ and abortion agendas both end up in line with US's liberty-first ethos.
It is left-wing to be pro-life. You are backing poor babies being born at the inconvenience of the already-born. Go figure.
You mean "has gotten worse over 50+ years in places with government intervention."
Already refuted all of this. You do not understand correlation vs causation, nor do you understand that valid syllogistic logic must necessarily be accepted. You talk about slogans while offering nothing else. You’re a waste of time to talk too.
For New York City (household income Gini):
1970: roughly 0.43–0.45 (estimates vary slightly by dataset)
2020: roughly 0.54–0.55
NYC has consistently ranked as one of the most unequal large cities in the United States.
For perspective:
• U.S. overall (2020): ~0.49
• NYC (2020): ~0.54–0.55
• Manhattan alone: even higher (~0.60+ in some years)
It's okay if you get more joy from chanting political slogans, as data is quite boring to look at.
You do not understand correlation vs causation
Whatever New York has been doing under mostly one tribe rule for 50 years, compared to the rest of the country, is not working.
But today's Democrat is tomorrow's Conservative. "Let's keep doing more of the same ancient things your ancestors did."
New York changed its policy once Trump left to go to Florida. New York even charged Trump for cheating on his tax returns.
