Curious why you made the distinction about real personal income when it is also rising. I agree wealth inequality is rising but not that it is coming at the expense of real personal incomes.

The long-term trend is that the average person’s income is rising but we’ve seen recent declines due to high inflation. Can you expand on your line of thinking? I’m not sure I follow your reasoning.

Most households living below the poverty line have at least one unemployed person, so giving people jobs is pulling them out of poverty. Whether or not they are treated fairly at work and are satisfied with their working conditions is another story.

My parents never could’ve either but $500k household net worth only puts you in the top 20% of households so it’s not like they were exceptionally wealthy and we don’t know if they borrowed to invest or what exactly their specific situation was. Miguel Bezos was a Cuban refugee and then worked as an engineer for Exxon and Jackie Bezos was a secretary so i mean this is pretty middle class IMO.

That doesn’t mean that all billionaires clawed their way to the top as i mentioned above, or that we shouldn’t make progressive changes to the tax code. It’s just important that we separate truth from fiction to make educated decisions.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schulz grew up in a Brooklyn Housing project, George Soros survived the holocaust and worked waiting tables, David Murdock of Dole Foods was homeless. There’s tons of examples.

Here’s a fun article that ranks the whole Fortune 400 list. 80% of them inherited their wealth or at least grew up middle class.

Jeff Bezos actually scores high on the list because his Mom had him when he was 17, he flipped burgers in high school and by and large did not grow up rich.

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The mass shootings are the symptom of a larger mental health problem. Here in Canada where we have much more gun control we recently memorialized one of our most deadly attacks, The Toronto van attack which killed 11 and wounded 15 (some critically). How is gun control going to help the fact that some people out there want to kill as many lives as possible?

I don’t need to debate you on this. The definition is there in Wikipedia. I’m not going to use pre-19th century terminology to describe the modern labour market just because it suits your political agenda.

Im not saying anything about pay, i am just stating what skilled vs unskilled labour is.

Words have specific meanings. We have commonly understood terminology. You can’t just deny this fact through revisionism without seriously losing your audience. Check out the agreed definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skilled_worker?wprov=sfti1

I just want to add, no, not all jobs require skills. Some jobs only require you to perform tasks, the tasks do not require any skill. What that means is virtually anyone can do it with very little training. For example a cook at McDonald’s only needs to be trained for about 2 weeks and they can perform the tasks required for their job. Unskilled jobs are important for young people to help them earn a living while developing skills.

Economists separate out skilled from unskilled labour for many reasons including shortages. In a skilled labour shortage for instance, it may take many years to recover (ie: doctor shortage) whereas with a shortage in unskilled labour the gap can be filled very quickly if employers are willing to raise wages. Because of the distinct quality skilled labour has we separate it out as it’s own type of labour. You couldn’t just walk into the doctors office with 2 weeks of training and start seeing patients.

As an analogy we could think of commodities vs specialized products. One stalk of corn or barrel of oil is nearly indistinguishable from another one of its kind, whereas an iPhone can’t be replaced by a Motorola and still hold the same properties.

Unskilled labour just means a job you can do with little training. Skilled labourers are like doctors, lawyer, engineers, tradespeople, etc. that take years of school and experience.