which is why the national debt in this country only exploded after reagan did that. no reagans tax cuts were stupid.
How to distribute wealth equally?
- Thread starter Saint
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Seattle
Valued Senior Member
It didn't only explode after Reagan. Clinton had a balanced budget.
You can't spend $600 billion a year on the military and lock up as many people as we have in prison and not have debt. We didn't need the Bush (and Trump) tax cuts.
Yes, rich people place an upward pressure on prices, just as poor people place a downward pressure on prices.
However, the argument "therefore if we had fewer rich people prices would be lower, and that would be good" is as valid (or as invalid) as the argument "therefore if we have more poor people prices would be lower, and that would be good."
"Controlling larger percentage of the total product" - agreed. And with that control comes jobs for other people, so they can make more money and elevate their income. With that control comes investment opportunities for stockholders, who can thereby make money and elevate their income. In other words, decrease income inequality by providing jobs and investment opportunities.
That sounds like a good reason to ensure that people who amass a lot of power have the characteristics that tend to prevent that problem - "It is less likely to develop in people who retain a personal modesty, remain open to criticism, have a degree of cynicism or well developed sense of humour."
And the question is one of degree. It's an adult judgment call. If only the very rich can buy land then all others are landless renters, for example. That is a qualitative change on the landscape - and a common one, historically. People of sound judgment prevent things like that, if they can.
Please don't do the wingnut "if dance". It's beneath you.
Nobody's talking about wanting fewer rich people - we're talking about them being less rich, as individuals and as a class, comparatively. There would probably be more rich people, in my suggested improvement. The equally "valid" argument is having poor people being less poor, comparatively, after all - clearly some might move up a notch.
The theory and evidence says that's not the case - beyond a certain level of inequality, one gets fewer jobs and/or they pay less relative to the cost of stuff. That's what loss of efficiency and productivity and innovation and so forth means - the measured effects of excessive inequality.
(Bloomberg has an interesting study, internet available, on the odd lack of productivity growth in the US of late. The data show it is not from lack of input from either labor or capital, which have both been acting to boost productivity, but is instead a counter-effect dampening of "total factor productivity". The people who own and control are somehow not as good at running things as they used to be. Any idea why?)
Obviously not in the interest of the rich. Are they being forced, somehow, to do that?
Make sure we have nothing but good kings, and we wouldn't need a Magna Carta in the first place.
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Yes. But that's not what I said. I said that having rich people who "sequester and control larger percentages of the total product" generally create jobs. If, for example, a car manufacturer gains control of a larger part of the TAM, he must employ more people to service that market.
Yes - by market forces. The more people who become a certain level of "rich", for example, the more people can buy expensive SUV's. So the market is "forcing" manufacturers of such SUV's to be reliant on people becoming richer.
That would be great. Bad kings, however, are very hard to get rid of. But unlike kings, we can depose the more evil captains of industry by simply avoiding engaging with their products.
The same strategy will of course work equally well with kings. If you can do it.
And I pointed out that by theory and evidence both that only works up to a point - that if too few control too much diminishing returns take over, and the net return can be - is, historically - negative.
That doesn't work - disproportionate wealth accumulation reduces the effect of market forces on the wealthy.
Uh, what are you trying to say? That the manufacturers of SUVs have to hire more people and pay them extra to make fewer but more expensive cars, and this more than compensates the economy for the loss of the much larger market for cheaper vehicles? That people who accumulate huge amounts of wealth will be forced to take up car manufacturing? What?
Well, it's easier to not use a product when there is no one with a sword at your back ready to kill you if you don't.
Not on their companies - just on them. (Which I am fine with.)
No. That rich people (who, for example, run luxury SUV factories) have a vested interest in people being wealthier, for purely selfish reasons (i.e. their own profit.) Indeed, economic events (like recessions) that lead to lower incomes can ruin such companies.
Not enough easier to produce easy examples.
Their disproportionate wealth insulates them from petty concerns of "market pressure". And they control it - those companies are theirs.
Not from their point of view. They gain far more by maintaining the disproportion now, than by any marginal extra nickels such calculations might or might not throw their way in years to come.
Aristocracies seldom dissolve themselves in the wake of wisely viewing their situation as inefficient and economically less profitable overall. The inefficiency of great inequality of course injures the very wealthy in some sense as well as everyone else - but if you wait for wisdom in the rich to restore sound distribution of wealth throughout a society you will wait a very long time.
Ah, so the threat of death is not a good motivator; the person is still free to refuse.
I always get sucked into discussions with you, then you pull this asinine shit. I should know better.
The exact opposite, was my posting. I clearly emphasized the common situation of not being able to refuse. Repeatedly. Every post.
Are you misrepresenting, taking things exactly backwards for the third consecutive post, in utter confusion or deliberate obfuscation?
If the latter, as seems increasingly likely, that rhetorical technique is straight from the creationist/wingnut playbook
In case you are actually confused: What you have still neither addressed or provided, as would have been an honest response, is a single example in support of your claim that people can easily remove an entire class of predatory capitalists and the disproportionate wealth accumulations they have established and maintain, from their positions of dominance, by boycotting their corporate products, refusing to work for them, etc, within the economy these people depend on for subsistence.
Meanwhile, that facile little bit of crankery was your (and many another wingnut's) response to my pointing out - as a completely ordinary and very well-esablished observation of the real world - that an aristocracy of disproportionate wealth is difficult to remove once emplaced, and impossible to remove via "market forces". The wealthy in a disproportionate setup have sufficient threats to maintain whatever market distortions they prefer, which when you choose to pretend are trivial by deflecting into bs about swords and crap are sufficiently obvious to call your motives into question.
You should, yes. You are sliding into genuine batshit, which is as noted beneath you.
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Not withstanding that the original post is naive, corporations who make better products make more money for their workers ideally. People who make more money can buy those products, if that's a metric..
Otherwise, why should someone who has few skills or talents be as wealthy as the guy that invented the cookstove that doesn't poison the cook? Why should the guy that herds sheep, and just might be happy in his life, make as much as Branson or Gates?
Sorry, I call bullshit.
Otherwise, why should someone who has few skills or talents be as wealthy as the guy that invented the cookstove that doesn't poison the cook? Why should the guy that herds sheep, and just might be happy in his life, make as much as Branson or Gates?
Sorry, I call bullshit.
I don't suggest that those who were not made to have talent should have the same life style of the talented .
But that does not mean that those who haven't wouldn't have the potential in their children .
Inotherwords talent or gifted children can from any position financial in society . From the poor to the rich . From the simple parents to the complex . It is the attitude of nurture of the gift by the parents , if they can .
What makes " no sense " , because to me it's obvious . And I am poor .
That was my question. What is obvious to you, and why is it so?
I should clarify a bit, I guess. I don't have much money, but I get done what needs doing. My life has been rich. My experience may not have been as rich as some other folks, but I'm happy as pig in a wallow. Generally.
I should clarify a bit, I guess. I don't have much money, but I get done what needs doing. My life has been rich. My experience may not have been as rich as some other folks, but I'm happy as pig in a wallow. Generally.