Yes, he did. However, the interpretation of that is that the rich, if they are 'good', have a back door entry to heaven. That is also what many politicians who talk god/bible also think/follow.

Jesus exists! He stole the hubcaps from my car last week!

"No one is really hurt much by some people being wealthy." Is the differentiation between the rich and the poor. Consider if all the people suddenly were given a million dollars...who could you hire at 50 cents an hour to mow your lawn? Taken it to the other extreme (what we have now) are people who are working but still homeless. But hey, I agree with you, the poor can always eat Soylent Green. Where may I ask, did you get your degree in economics?

@dahermit No degree in economics, but I can spot fallacious reasoning. I mow my own lawn, but what is meant by your second sentence??

If you gave everyone a million dollars you would not accomplish one solitary thing. A dollar would be totally worthless—zilch. That’s because money is not true wealth. Real wealth is goods and services while money is only an accounting system. Real wealth has to be continuously created.

What the hell is Soylent Green? Maybe I need to get some of that.

@dahermit I'm not sure what you are saying either, the rate of homelessness in the US has decreased significantly in the US in the past 10 years, except in places with higher rental prices. A 5% increase in rent prices could lead to nearly 3000 more homeless people.

[zillow.com]

The study was conducted using rental price indexes from zillow combined with US census data.

@Happy_Killbot It would seem that homelessness has ended a ten year decline and is again increasing: [huffpost.com]
Rents going up, inflation always increasing, income stagnating. However, we can rest assured that the U.S. has the richest people in the world...sleeping well at night.

@dahermit What's the problem with rich people? Isn't the solution to the homelessness cheaper affordable housing, which could be best accomplished by wealthy individuals more apt and able to take the risk of such construction projects?

And isn't a small, steady inflation a good thing because it devalues debt and creates a disincentive for over consumption?

@Happy_Killbot And just where are those rich people building "affordable" housing? West Palm Beach? You seem to be exposing "The Trickle-Down Theory"...which ignores the greed of the wealthy. The ONLY two entities that can live on the trickle down theory are a horse and a sparrow. The wealthy continue to get wealthier, the poor increase in numbers and wages stagnate and are eaten by inflation.

@dahermit Trickle down economics is a lie, it's not a legitimate economic theory and no one has ever proposed this.
[forbes.com]

The poor aren't increasing in numbers, in fact poverty rates in the US have significantly decreased since the 1960's and earlier, and around the world in developing nations.
[census.gov]

The number of homes constructed is on the rise since the 2008 financial crisis. In fact, the number of homes built in 2018 is enough that every homeless person could get their own home with 100,000 to spare. ( this ignores birth and immigration )
[statista.com]

The rich are getting richer, but that alone isn't enough information to determine if the poor are getting poorer, because it's possible that everyone is getting wealthier, or just the rich are, and that seems to be the case. Consider this example:

Lets say there is an economy composed of just 3 people and $1,110,000. person 1 has $1 M ( ~90% ), person 2 has $100 K ( ~9% ) and person 3 has $10 K. ( ~ 0.9% ) Lets say thanks to savings and smart investing, the economy goes up and an additional $60,000 are added to the economy ( ~5.4% increase ) person 1 invested the most, and gets $50,000, person 2 receives $10,000 and person 3 gets $0. now the wealth looks like this: person 1 has $1.05 M ( ~90.5% ) person 2 has $110 K ( ~ 9.5% ) and person 3 has $10 think ( ~0.8% )

The wealth inequality has increased, even though the poor are no better or worse off than they were before. Wealth inequality isn't necessarily a problem because wealth is a positive sum game, meaning the size of the pie can increase.

@WilliamFleming On the other hand, if you give just a few people all the money, you have an imperial system (kingdom). Do you really want that? .... And ummm "soylent green" is people.

Warren and Sanders are not "extremely wealthy" by my standards .... let's say anyone having a net worth over $50M is "extremely wealthy". Now POTUS, Bezos, Gates, Waltons, and many others qualify ... Warren and Sanders, certainly not!!

@Normanbites If you are talking about money as in cash, you wouldn’t be able to give a few people all the money. Trading must go on, and money is nothing more than a system for facilitating that trade. People would barter or devise new money.

If you are talking about real wealth as in goods and services, then I must point out that that handful of wealthy people you mentioned consume an extremely minute percentage of the world’s annual supply of wealth. Typically a wealthy person eats no more than a person of average means. So in that regard there’s no way of giving a few people all the wealth.

You must be talking about their investments, such as stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. Investments harm no one. When a person invests they are enabling the creation of real wealth, wealth that benefits people around the world. I suggest letting people keep their investments. If you confiscated and liquidated all of Bill Gates’s assets and distributed the money equally, each person would get about a dollar—enough for a cup of coffee maybe if you choose regular brew.

@WilliamFleming When 3 people hold as much wealth as the bottom 200,000,000 out of 400,000,000 as it is in the US, I would say something is severely out of line and needs some management. In fact, I would say we are dangerously close to the scenario I suggested.

And yes, I mean wealth as in holdings. To have a home and a car, there must be some investment. Since the Civil war, mortgages have enabled a "slight of hand" where Bill Gates owns your house and you own a mortgage. Our financial system is involved in this to be sure.

I agree with you that the extremely wealthy consume a very small portion of what they hold, they don't need to. While the bottom half of the nation live on everything they have and then some, just for the sake of survival, they need to.

Wealth is like a blood flow to a society. If it isn't moving around, the body isn't doing well. And when the wealthy hold the majority of the wealth, that's what is happening.

@Normanbites Since the Civil War the standard of living in this country has steadily improved. I can attest that the standard of living in my area has vastly improved over the last seventy years. Every bit of that improvement can be attributed to the creation of real wealth by entrepreneurs and through the pooling of resources as is done with companies, corporations, and with government.

You continue to equate what you call “holdings” with wealth. Three people do not “hold” as much wealth as 200,000,000. True wealth is not held—it is used or consumed and has to be continuously created anew. Three people might hold as much in equities as 200,000,000, but that has nothing to do with anything—no one is in the least harmed by their ownership of stocks and bonds.

Yes, wealth is like blood flow, if the wealth is not moving around the body isn’t doing well. Wealth is goods and services, and those things are moved around through free trade. If you want to take part in that free trade circulation find a way to contribute—create wealth or help someone else create wealth.

Sitting in a dark cave of envy and grievance and plotting to strip other people of their equities will get you nowhere. Whenever governments have confiscated holdings the result has always been catastrophic, with widespread poverty, starvation and civil strife.

@WilliamFleming I find it quite amusing that people such as yourself will claim that whether or not a few people hold a great deal of relative wealth makes no difference at all to the economy.

Yet nearly in the same breath you are nearly panic stricken at the mere thought of redistributing wealth, calling it "envy and grievance and plotting to strip others of their equities ...."

If it makes no difference, why the fuss?? I smell a lie here somewhere.

@Normanbites You can simply look at what happened where your “redistribution” has been tried. There are several horrifying examples..

Besides that, you would not be redistributing real wealth anyway. You’d be crippling commerce and the means of production and the result would be fewer goods and services for everyone. I have no objection to higher taxes on the wealthy, up to a point, but I oppose confiscation and redistribution. Confiscation of someone’s assets is illegal and unjust and could not be done without a drastic change in our form of government.

Again, and for the last time, the fact that a wealthy person holds a lot of equities does not cause poor people to be poor. In your world someone like Bill Gates has more than his share of wealth, leaving others in need. The only way that could happen is if Bill consumed a great deal of the nation’s goods, causing shortages. Let’s say that Bill really likes cornbread and he bought most of the available supply. Prices would skyrocket and ordinary people would have to eat something else. Farmers would literally fall all over themselves to grow more corn to make up the shortage.

Looks like we are never going to agree so I’m pulling out. Have a nice evening.

@WilliamFleming Wealth redistribution was "tried" in this country during and after WWII to great success IMHO. It created the middle class and it took the uber wealthy decades to unravel the redistribution regulations that were put in place.

And again, you express distress at a notion you earlier declared to have no effect. Verry interesting!!!

@WilliamFleming "Redistribution" of wealth as resulted in the highest standard of living on earth in the Democratic Socialist countries of Europe. So much for your, " ...look at what happened where your “redistribution” has been tried. There are several horrifying examples.." Yup..."horrifying examples".

@dahermit If those countries redistributed wealth they didn’t do a very good job of it. Looks like from this article that those northern and Western European countries are about the same as the US in wealth distribution.

[gfmag.com]

@WilliamFleming If your posts are not disingenuous (a possibility), then your news is old. Here's some news that should be more current than yours ... the middle class in the US is definitely shrinking in "holdings". The rest of the world is maintaining a healthy(-ier) middle class compared to the US.

[investopedia.com]

@Normanbites The article I cited is current and the data is for 2018. Moreover, the article is specifically about “Wealth Distribution and Income Inequality by Country 2018”. You must not have even looked at it.

The article you quoted is about which country has the richest middle class. No current figures are given, but by world standards the US middle class is very well off.

[thebalance.com]

We live in one of the richest countries in the world and the standard of living is as good as it’s ever been. Jobs are plentiful. If you are not satisfied with your economic situation maybe you should think of some way to contribute more to society.

@WilliamFleming I haven't revealed my economic situation and I'm not about to do that just to satisfy your curiosity.

The problem with quoting statistics is that so much depends on your definition of terms. It would appear your definition of "middle class" contains approximately 1 person. I'm talking about a middle class that would represent about 60% of the population of a given country. By that measure, the middle class in the US has been loosing ground rapidly since the 70's.

I'm still amused by your assertions "I am a mathematician and I tell you numbers don't mean anything". And "Wealth distribution wouldn't make any difference, but dammit don't you dare do it". You should consider a comedy act, it's pretty hilarious.

[pewresearch.org]

Wow so brutal, but true.

I like Bernie. But I think you are shorting Liz on credit due. She was a economics and commercial law professor at several leading universities including Harvard.

During that time, she was constantly remarking and complaining about our financial system and the unfair advantages of the uber wealthy and the financial institutions.

Only after a run in with Hillary Clinton over issues related to the Dodd-Frank bill, did she decide to run for congress and won, obviously.

Her policies do sound a lot like Sander's. I think they would make a good election team. But she clearly does not agree with Sander's on everything (but then neither do I). She does have her own thinking process.

The wealthy run the system and they run it for their benefit.

Here they are! It's Jesus(s)! They have returned and they are all rich!
[nationalgeographic.com]

Well the difference with this statement is Jesus hung out with sinners and publicans not the Sadducees and Pharisees or as we know them today the Christian Right. He told, in the sermon on the mount, to care for the poor, sick, stranger in our land, and the parentless. The Christian Right do not do these things.