How to distribute wealth equally?

Discussion in 'Business & Economics' started by Saint, Feb 2, 2017.

  1. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    16,479
    sadly it looks like he is right

    U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton

    here is a link to the opinions to anyone interested

    https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-1456.ZO.html
     
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  3. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,842
    Of course I'm right. There was a period back in the 70's when term limits were the big thing, people were also trying to get "big money" out of campaigns or lobbying.

    Eventually, "big money" lobbies and laws change, the Supreme Court is stacked with conservatives, and now it's as bad as it's ever been.

    I'm not against the poor. That is just stupid. Anyone who disagrees with you isn't someone who thinks the poor are lazy. Many people have been "poor" at some point in their life. However "poor" is more of an emotional state of mind just like being "unhappy".

    If you are living on the street you are poor. Otherwise you just have to adjust your budget, lifestyles, make a plan, etc.

    I'm all for universe education and healthcare.
     
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  5. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    wow aren't you mr. humble. you'd do yourself a lot of favors if you lost the attitude. people dont listen to assholes; if you want people to listen to you perhaps you shouldn't act like one
    while i dont disagree you that the conservative stacking of the supreme court by ideologues is a problem it should be noted that the only judge to write a dissenting opinion in thorton was clarence thomas who is one of the most conservative justices on the court

    so anyone who disagrees with is stupid? anyone who thinks your marginalizing the plight of the poor is stupid?
    i dont think you think the poor are lazy because you i disagree with you. i think you think the poor are lazy and think we should fuck them because your posting here was just dripping with contempt and condencendion toward them
    that is literally one of the dumbest things ive ever heard. changing ones attitude doesn't increase ones bank account.

    actually there are homeless people who make a reasonably decent income they just cant afford housing because rich assholes managed to price it out of their ability to afford it. look at san fransisco or aspen Colorado. this is your fuck the poor attitude. you've clearly had a life of privilage and dont actually understand what life is like for the poor. hell ive lived a life of privilage i just try not to be an asshole about it.


    thats great but there still the issues of food, shelter, clothes, transportation.
     
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  7. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    So you think someone's income who works in Des Moines (for instance) should be distributed to someone who makes a good income but who lives in San Francisco and can't afford housing in San Francisco?

    Education and healthcare do a lot toward not being in that circumstance in the first place. For those who are actually in that situation I'm all for society/government giving them help.

    If you have a good income, consider yourself "poor" and can't afford to live in San Francisco I think you need a better plan.

    Being "poor" is largely a mindset. Your bank account limits your choices but you make those choices. Don't have kids that you can't afford, don't buy a new car if you can't afford it, get roommates if necessary. That's how most other people handle a lower paying job.

    Most (not all) people who are lower income in the U.S. are still well off in universal terms. Those who aren't, deserve help. Overtaxing everyone else isn't the answer. Making it harder for those who can and do save to continue to do so, isn't a good plan.

    Yes, I'm being a jerk (in part) but I'm largely dealing with a jerk (iceaura). We're talking about someone who blames everything on "the rich" and who thinks that most people are poor. Someone who doesn't think money should be available for lending and who doesn't agree with paying interest on money loaned.

    All this does is lower the playfield for everyone. It's not helpful to kill the economy and make everyone equally poor.
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2018
  8. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    6,460
    Economies stagnate when wealth is concentrated among people who aren't generating economic activity, and those who are generating economic activity find those activities stifled. That's what happens when the economic playing field isn't leveled based on merit but rather contains some sort of systemic inequality.

    Capitalism already contains a mechanism to prevent excess wealth accumulation in the hands of people who aren't generating it: inflation. When workers can no longer afford the products they want with the jobs they work, they demand higher salaries, and companies are then forced to pay those salaries (since hardly anyone will accept a less-than-livable wage without extensive government assistance), or else shut down and make way for competition that is willing to pay what the workers demand. In the event of excess wealth accumulation, companies would furthermore be forced to reduce their prices by means other than cutting employee salaries in order to make their products more affordable.

    Again, anything governments do to unfairly tilt the playing field and prevent people from reaping the bulk of what they sow, will simply reduce the harvest for all, at least when government intervention exceeds a certain threshold. What governments should be doing besides helping those who can't look after themselves, is to make sure that people have equal opportunities to learn the skills they need to be as useful as possible to the societies they wish to live in, and that they have fair and equal opportunities to profit from their skills without being discriminated against based on traits irrelevant to the job/loan/grant.
     
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    In 1982, the average American on the Forbes list of 400 richest had a net worth - total - of 230 million dollars. By 2016 the Koch brother's political donor group alone could put an announced sum of 889 million into the level of US politics directly responsible for selecting Federal and Supreme Court Justices, without serious effects on anyone's net worth. In the intervening years of growing rich guy influence, all five of the Justices who delivered the Citizens United ruling were appointed by Koch supported Presidents and confirmed by Koch favored Senates.
    The Citizens United decision - the Court that delivered it - was a direct consequence of allowing too much wealth inequality. It was not "conservative" in any meaningful sense (there is no way on earth to derive Constitutional rights for incorporated capital and anonymous foreign interests from any American political tradition or common practice or "original" intellectual discussion) - that destruction of vocabulary as a means of crippling reason is standard tactics in modern authoritarian movements.
    For what?
    It's a bad system of governance - the gold makes the rules is even worse than he who has the gold makes the rules.
    It's a very good system (from my pov, as someone who values freedom and liberty) for producing and allocating goods and services for which a market can be set up (a function of government).
    It's a mediocre system of adjudicating social status and societal relations. imo.
    Yes, it is. You continue to argue with observation - this is not an opinion question, it's a data and evidence question.
    I'll try pictures:
    https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/
    http://www.visualcapitalist.com/wealth-inequality-problem-one-chart/
    By now, less than 1% of the US population has accumulated more than 40% of the US wealth, including most of the wealth from the net gain in productivity since 1982 or thereabouts (top third got all of that). The analogous situation in some arena of business would be called a de facto monopoly, and anti-trust legislation would apply. Government coercion enforcing the breaking of trusts is part of the standard regulation of capitalist economies, necessary because trusts destroy the market competition that is their means of self-regulation.
    Why are you obsessed with your fantasies about other people's moods and character flaws and "fairness" and so forth? The topic here is governance of a capitalist economy, in particular what to do if one has mistakenly allowed its natural tendency toward disproportionate wealth accumulation to run too far - and it's doing serious damage.
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2018
  10. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,842
    It is humorous that you made this discussion personal from the beginning and have continued to do so all the while complaining about my personal comments. Get used to it.

    You like capitalism as an economic system but not as a political system however capitalism isn't a political system. It tends to go hand in hand with some type of representative democracy and neither systems are "pure" of course.

    It's also kind of hard to have a capitalistic economic system with a socialistic political system. All systems are hybrids so I'm not arguing that it can't be done but there are prices to pay.

    Regarding the data. You can't just look at how much the 1% control (or rather you can do it but it doesn't tell the whole picture necessarily). You also need to look at how the pie is increased. Anti-trust laws don't necessarily try to break up natural monopolies. If you invent a better mouse trap, become successful and gain a large market share that's not something to break up.

    Amazon is successful and is not something to break up. It might be something to regulate more tightly if they are abusing temporary worker laws but they would be considered a natural "monopoly".

    People have plenty of other choices but just end up choosing Amazon. The computer software pie is larger because of Bill Gates. He isn't making the pie smaller in the way that Standard Oil or the railroads were doing.

    In many of the countries where you might prefer their income redistribution laws you don't tend to see Amazons or Microsofts. This is called killing the goose that laid the golden egg (potentially).

    Now, of course you can take this analogy too far and you can also take capitalism too far. That's why it is regulated.
     
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Socialist political system? Which one?
    As with capitalism, there are several political systems possible for governing socialist economic setups. As with capitalism, they cover the entire libertarian/authoritarian range.
    You can, and many do, look at the inequality alone as a separate factor - independent of the pie. That's what all my posts here are about. That's the topic - the damaging effects of allowing the disproportionate wealth accumulation and income stream that capitalism will create unless curbed.
    Yes, it is something to break up. (All monopolies are "successful" - that's what success is, in a capitalist system)
    Unless they are bloggers with political opinions Amazon doesn't like. Then they cannot choose Amazon to link through and monetize their audience, for the mutual profit of Amazon and the blogger, and the convenience and benefit of the blogger's skillfully and persistently built up audience, because Amazon will cut them off.
    At which point some of the effects of allowing de facto monopoly status for Amazon in online retail of everything will become more easily visible, right?
    That's if you missed the lesson of the recent bookseller's revolt against Amazon's setting their prices for them, the musicians's protest against Amazon violating their copyrights, and so forth.
    Wise governance will socialize natural monopolies (because they are not subject to market self-regulation). Amazon is not a natural monopoly.
    Not true. You are 0 for the thread in guessing my thinking.
    You mean that's why it should be regulated. The problem we face in the US is that we quit regulating it sufficiently, step by step starting around 1981, and it did what it naturally does - piled most of the wealth into just a few barns. Now we face the consequences of having most of the wealth in just a few barns.
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2018
  12. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,479
    no i think the rich people in san fransico should be taxed so they cant crowd out everyone else in san fransico lower housing rates to a more affordable rates.

    ok but there are other effects that cause it that you seem to think should be ignored and let people be fucked since they in your fucked up opinion choose to be poor.

    and i think you should pull your head out of your ass and actually understand how this happened. they did chose to live in an area they coulodn't afford housing. they lived in an area where the efforts of the rich priced the ability to live in the area out of reach. samething is happening in aspen.

    no it isnt. that is rightwing propaganda so they blame the victims of their policies rather than admit its their policies causing that.
    again showing you have no fucking clue what your talking about. a lot of these people are right wingers told not to use birth control by their churches and accidents happen. and its also the height of eugenics to tell poor people to not breed. most poor people dont drive new cars. its not always possible to get roommates. again your entire attitude is one of condencendion and privilage.

    thats fucking irrelevant. that compared to a starving african family they have it good doesn't change the fact they are getting screwed here.
    there in lie the rub. you just dont want to pay more in taxes. and overtaxing is a subjective thing.
    again you sound so fucking ignorant. your just repeating rightwing talking points. oh think of the job creators, fuck em, they dont actrually create jobs. you trying to paint ice and i going after surburbia when that is not at all the goal. the efforts are to stop the rampant income and wealth inequality that inevitablely lead to revolution.

    one persons failure to be decent is not an excuse to follow suit. you still have the obligation to be decent.
    thats cute considering i find ice to way to premisive of corporate power. no ice recognizing that the bottom 60% have seen their real wages increase in a signifigant manor in 30+ years and the bottom 20% have seen their real wages decline while the top 20% has been raking it in with the top 1% income and wealth growth have exploded and your attitude is fuck the poor they deserve it.

    taking money for the top 20% that isn't spending it and giving it to the bottom 40% who will would dramatically boost the economy and boost wages. that you think income and wealth concentration is good for the economy means you dont understand economics.
     
  13. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    16,479
    you say that like its a bad thing. microsoft has stayied in its position by the use of vaporware due to its monopolist power. it has been subject to numerous antitrust lawsuits in multiple countries. as for amazon they treat their employees like garbage.
    https://gizmodo.com/reminder-amazon-treats-its-employees-like-shit-1792642652

    this is part of the problem. that other countries dont have amazons is a good thing
     
  14. Dr_Toad It's green! Valued Senior Member

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    2,527
    Well. The usual suspects have used their thread-killing superpowers again.

    Mods, do you keep them around as amusement? That seems like cruelty to children or animals.

    This thread is as dead as Socialism.
     
  15. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    In whose daydream world does that happen? You watch some kind of anime cartoon of an introductory economics textbook?
    Ok, back when there were unions you saw some of that - but that was also back before the inequality got this bad (not a coincidence).
    The most prosperous workers in my area are buying vehicles on six and seven year loans now, to keep the payments down, and at my previous job every single fellow employee - every one of them - was living with a serious medical issue they could not afford to have treated. These are the ones with decent jobs. That business of employees "demanding" higher - and you give yourself away here - "salaries", is just bizarre.

    Shoot, the reason that doesn't work in an inequality-dominated economy was laid out by Karl Marx in the 1800s - the "reserve army of the unemployed".
    And you have partly explained offshoring - as well as union-busting, temp and contract hiring, robotics and AI for everything possible, and so forth. All this stuff returns to capital, and feeds back into the wealth accumulation at the top.
    Fairness has nothing to do with it. Allowing too much inequality of wealth will reduce the harvest for all but wealthy (this is known by theory and documented in practice) - whether you regard preventing that as tilting the playing field or keeping the field level is up to you, but the consequences of failing to prevent it are not otherwise avoidable.
     
  16. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,842
    Taxing the rich isn't going to make real estate more affordable unless you propose to take all of their money (above the median income) away. There aren't enough "rich" to have the effect that you are speaking of in the first place. You talk about the top 1%. The top 1% aren't taking up most of the real estate.

    Priceless.

    I haven't said that income and wealth concentration is good for the economy. Taking money from the top 20% because they aren't "spending" it doesn't exactly show your grasp of economics.

    In any event, if you have any money that you aren't spending, I'll take it.
     
  17. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,842
    We're talking apples and oranges here. I'm not using those companies as examples of the best workplace or the best corporate governance.

    They are examples of why the U.S. economy is as large as it is compared to most other countries. You don't see as many companies that are able to take over the global market coming from many other countries. They don't have economies that are as strong as the U.S. You can't redistribute income if there is no income.
     
  18. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    They're taking up a lot more than 1%. By the time you are down to the top 10 - 20% - and the foreign money - you've got pretty much the entire support for the maintenance of bubble prices and the bidup of capital owned real estate covered.
    Also the financing for it, etc.
    You seem to be confusing size with strength. The US economy is topheavy - and that makes it fragile. Remember it was the US crashing in '07 that brought down the rest. Meanwhile: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...d-world/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c083e3101fe2
     
  19. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,842
    Cuba's economy isn't top heavy but its strength is lacking.

    If you want to call the situation in San Francisco "bubble pricing", that's not the case in Detroit.

    If you want to distribute wealth more evenly then I guess you could argue for a system like Finland. I wouldn't argue for such a system but income is distributed more equally.
     
  20. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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  21. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    7,447
    distribute wealth

    interesting to see the subject twisted to be something else.
     
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  22. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    16,479
    socialism is alive and well
     
  23. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    16,479
    no you wouldn't. you would only need to tax it enough to prevent massive price inflation relative to the median income.
    and yet contrary to your opinion it does happens, this is a fact.
    https://www.coloradoindependent.com/153600/in-aspen-even-doctors-need-affordable-housing
    its not just about what they buy it about the potential to buy.


    i have the obligation to be decent, i chose not to fufill it. also a person who cant be bothered to treat people decently doesn't deserve respect in return. you cannot demand that which you are not willing to give out. it should be noted all of the comments you pulled out are about your attiude and beliefs and not an assualt on your person.



    no merely implied it.
    correction it does. i'm a strong believer in keynesian economic theory the uberrich aren't doing anything all that productive with their money.

    cute, how very republican of you.
     

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