simple, talking money from people who know how to earn it and giving it to those who don't is a liberal and stupid idea that discourages everyone from working and contributing. This is how the USSR and Red China slowly starved 120 million to death
Prevents those not rich from becoming rich. Crafted by the rich to prevent escape from the middle class
Explain or just quip? On the plus side effects - Home ownership. Real pensions. One income homes. Stable financial institutions. Disagree about becoming rich. Just not by Wall St. paper profits. Invent a better widget and one could still become rich.
Did I not make it clear enough that I was making a general observation - that many of Baff's replies aren't referenced, and not just the first one after the OPs?
A heavy progressive tax code taxes income. It doesn't tax wealth. A young professional, fresh out of training is taxed like a Rockefeller the very first moment he makes a decent income, despite having a large negative net wealth, debt out the Ying yang and foregoing many years of earnings, just to get to the point of finally earning an income. This severely inhibits his chances of closing the gap on the wealthy. Ain't no quip. Heavy progressive taxes do not close the gap, they widen it
not to mention that progressive taxes reward failure and punish success. It does not matter to a liberal how twisted an idea is if it will collect revenue that Liberals can use to buy votes.
Thank you. Really So no big net scores fresh out of school, gotta save. Still do better than those who did not go to school. Imagine what would have happened in the fifties if the tax code was as today. Regular people would pay rent for public works appearing homes while a few live above. Instead we got suburbs Concentration of wealth removes currency from day to day transactions thereby stagnating a domestic economy. Assuming there is a finite amount of currency available to a nation within reason. Little people have more currency, they spend it, driving the economy. Groceries. Services. And not sequestered. But, hey, that's just Moi's analysis. And wealth needs to be addressed via inheritance taxes.
Market-economies depend upon a number of factors, and those sometimes indigenous factors that determine how growth is pursued country by country. Outcomes over very long periods of years, however, are still a matter of fate. The "great" family empires of Europe, that lasted for more than a thousand years finally reduced themselves to individual countries. (But that did not stop those who owned the means of production from (ie. "business") from have a large influence over economic outcomes in each country. Why are the northern hemisphere countries on this planet richer than the southern hemisphere? In South America, the peoples are mostly offshoots of only two European countries, Portugal & Spain. What happened? At first, all produce of the SA countries was shipped back for the most part to either of two geographic areas - the US (nearby and growing) and Europe (not so near-by and at war too often). Finally the SA countries became beholden to their own national constituencies - and vigorous growth somehow stalled. Per capital "wealth" in SA is lesser today than it was a hundred or two hundred years ago. The expanse of the US gave it a larger advantage since there was sufficient geography to foster large scale farming techniques. But also, the land provided the US with a natural advantage in mineral resources. Tiny Israel did not have that same luck. Isreal needed to focus on its one strength - knowledge. Which is why it is an important producer of advanced technology products. Tiny Switzerland does not have that many native people. But the fact that it was mountainous made Switzerland a country nobody particularly cared to invade. Not even Napoleon. So, isn't it natural that people outside the country would want to keep their money there? Which made for very large sums of capital available for development of businesses and thus employment of its "smallish" population. These above are examples of how geography sets some very difficult conditions to overcome but also - at the same time - make for good-fortunes of other countries.. So, the dependence upon geographic situation of country (with its advantages and disadvantages) forced its constituents to think in very difference ways given each specific circumstance, which they did. And sometimes with great success, though not always. For instance, the expanse of China (once unified under an emperor) made China a powerful nation. But the manner of government (a very long sequence of family emperors) remained constant over time. And when the people desired more freedom, dynastic-control of the country came apart at the seams. China finally found its industrial reconstruction after a very damaging war as a Communist Regime. Which is still "communist" today but in name only given the disparity of incomes/wealth amongst its peoples. My Point? In each and every example above, people indigenous to a land developed according to what the land offered in terms "input quantities" with which to support market-economies that were more or less wealthy depending upon a great many "variables" - some human intelligence and others natural resources and even others blessed with both. But always it was the manner in which mankind created and ran its economies that produced either the most or least good for any nation's people ...
the US did quite well until foreign outsourcing and foreign in-sourcing threw a wench in it labor costs will always be cheaper in 3rd world nations that do not treat their workers as well as here in the USA we either level the playing field with things like tariffs or become a 3rd world country ourselves, I prefer the prior
I agree to a point. One of the things that is easy to overlook about the US is that in the past it has had little competition. In it's glory years, China was not a developed country, and Europe's industry had been shattered by war. So not all of the decline of America's industry globally is policy led. Other actors are involved. The climate has changed.
== This is a standard deviation curve. The more data we add to the curve, the greater the distance between the two extremes. As mean wealth increases... the gap between rich and poor increases. As population increases the gap between rich and poor increases. If every single person in the country gets richer... the gap between richest and poorest will grow. So, in the fifties, the country was poorer. People were poorer. There were less people. Statistically we hence expect the gap between rich and poor to be closer.
There is another possibility, those 3rd world countries could experience demands for higher wages, worker protection, and a better living environment from the workers. Those workers also become consumers expanding the market. All this is evident in China today.
Careful here, @james M , you are getting very close to endorsing neoliberalism and I'm not confident you know the meaning of neoliberalism.
Using economics on an economics sub-forum? Well, by gosh! Didn't you ever think to find a school of thought to base your argument around? Didn't that seem the obvious thing to do? That you haven't applied green economics, for example, suggests that you merely have whinge opinion.
Were any of you theory thumpers Alive in in the fifties? Oh, and besides the natural endowments of an area for resources, population, industriousness, etc. there is still the over riding culture of how to "share the wealth". Puritan Ethic vs FDR Welfare. Israel comes to mind with such a socialist oriented population of pretty much egalitarian wealth in the fifties to morph into their uber rich and renters today. What a conundrum. The purpose of this thread is to challenge this bipartisan idea in so many nations Grow We Must! It's a lie.This philosophy has led to denial of a nation's citizens of their natural resources, Australia and a malignant redistribution of wealth to the few. Talking about wealth redistribution. It is okay when tax laws push the wealth to the few. And that is what it is about. Besides, uploaders, please - Do You Remember the Fifties or just read about that economy. Moi Greenspan fan even after he denounced himself.
You are making a statement as fact without having established it to be true. I reject the notion that economic growth leads to imbalance. We had decades of economic growth in the 40x-70s that did not lead to a (greater) imbalance of wealth. If economic/government policies result in the distribution of economic growth just to the wealth, then no, economic growth will not improve quality of life for the average person. Indeed, this is exactly what happened in the US with the adoption of "trickle down" economic policies beginning the the early 1980s. Growth has a lot of benefits, if its reasonably spread through the economy.
Greenspan was and is a libertarian. He was merely surprised that the markets did not adjust quickly enough to the massive liberal interference in the housing market. Do you understand?
Capitalism naturally does that. How could Gates Jobs Musk Brin Bezos grow the economy so much and be so rich unless everyone could buy their incredible new inventions thus spreading the wealth.
simple without economic growth from stone age to here we'd all be dead. The earth could not support us. This is why Republicans support growth. Do you understand?
Yes, too bad that has been less and less the history of economic growth these last decades. I wonder how Microsoft has changed their share the wealth policies of the eighties compared to today. Back then they grew, split, grew, split. Change of policy or less profitable in the 21st Century? BTW did you live the fifties? Thank you.
