80% of the world's population lives on less than $10/day. In a more globalized economy American workers are increasingly going to be competing with those people for jobs. This is true even if you're not
directly competing. Let's say you have a job as a waiter at a restaurant. Clearly a person in India can't take that job. But the fact that other low income positions have been transferred to India/China/Mexico means that the labor pool competing for the wait staff position has increased, which should push down wages. Let's not show our hubris by lamenting the woes of the American poor who are often in fact in the global 1%.
>Not once did you offer an alternative or a better idea. Show me what you have in mind that can get people back to work.
Get rid of the minimum wage. Replace the corporate and income tax with a VAT sales tax. Don't charge the VAT on exports. If you can't do that, at least get rid of regressive taxes like Social Security that transfer wealth from the lower classes to the upper middle class. Open free trade with any country on the planet, even countries we hate, and even if they put tariffs on our goods. End the government monopoly on education by using a voucher system. Over time, reduce total government (federal + local) spending down to 15% of GPD max, preferably more like 10%. Transition regulations from things that specify a solution to taxes on a problem. For example, instead of regulating every car needs a catalytic converter, tax the pollution that a car produces. Maybe someone will invent something even better than a catalytic converter.
>Explain to me how the wealth gap in the United States can be solved with your philosophical outlook, and I'll be really interested to see what you come up with.
I don't care one iota about how much money a wealthy person has because in macro-economics, wealth is not a zero sum game. Not to mention, the premise you're working under just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I buy an iPad from Tim Cook because I value an iPad more than I value the $400 I've got in my pocket. Tim Cook sells me the iPad because he values my $400 more than he values the iPad he's got. But now, because a bunch of other people also bought iPads from Tim Cook I feel like I deserve some sort of rebate in the form of forcibly taking some of Tim Cook's money? How does that make any sense at all?
Instead of being concerned about some people having more than me, I am interested in my personal moral responsibility to help my fellow man. So far as poverty is concerned, there has never been a more effective machine for eliminating poverty than the free enterprise system and the free market. Socializing what you might call solutions to problems with poverty may temporarily help the people you're looking at in the now, but you're robbing from the future by stifling the rising tide of innovation that brings up the standard of living for everyone.
I won't say it's easy but avoiding poverty is fairly simple: graduate high school, maintain employment, and don't have children out of wedlock. That's obviously not a 100% guarantee, but those 3 things, by far, have the strongest correlations with poverty of anything else you'll find. Our social welfare systems incentivize people not to maintain employment, to keep pumping out children they can't afford, and to get easy divorces which breaks up families and increases poverty. If you do nothing else but get rid of those things, you'll reduce poverty significantly in a generation.