Destroying one crucial pillar of liberal ideology — "Wealth Inequality is bad"

Thank you for confirming my long time suspicion that leftwing ideology is rooted directly from ignorance and fatuousness and shares quite a common bond with backward, unenlightened superstitions.

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So, be your own boss?

I swear to whatever is holy they get dumber and dumber every time.

 

That "wealth inequality = bad " does not stand.

 

Yes, be your own boss. Take over the workplaces and run them democratically.

 

Yea, go ahead. I'm sure that's how you get things done in Brazil.

Good luck. LOL.

 

Why do you think stimulus is any different then what you just posted?

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Why do you have to steal first? Why can't you just compete against them democratically?

 

when I come across a post with an "argument" that the poster has to preface his argument with an accusation that anyone that doesnt' agree is stupid and unable reason or apply logic, I generally take a dim view of both the poster and the argument.

And then when the argument turns out to be something like nothing more than an anti-liberal screed couched in a retread of St.Ronnies failed "trickle down", it becomes obvious that "refutation" is pointless and that the best response is to offer up a sarcastic version of the original qualification preface. I do this just to give the poster a taste of his own medicine, which of course flies completely over his head.


IOW - I don't take such nonsensical crap seriously.

 

I bet you were up all night constructing that piece of fallacious nonsense.

Its a pity your political perspective is full of such virtriolic hatred of any perspective not your own, that you cannot actually engage in adult conversation but must continually demonstrate that extreme partisanship is extremely stupid.

 

It's because your post is basically nothing more than a condescending tone of anger towards liberals, whatever that is, making unfounded accusations towards one's intelligence as your introductory argument. Which by the way is not an argument; just a rant. Then the rest of your post is just a complaint about government and regulations, while you create a hypothetical of trickle down economics from rich people. First of all, that myth has already been debunked so many times, it makes one economically diluted of facts. So, your arrogance and ignorance has been noted I'm sure by the very ones who realize they possess a higher percentage of that 90 below IQ you have. So why bother explaining something to you?

 

I described in my op a possible scenario.

You are trying to twist it into the ONLY OPTION.

Either you are intellectually dishonest, or does not at all meet the basic requirement(s) listed in the beginning of my op.

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I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to say. Yes, if everyone had enough money to buy a yacht, it would be a time of boom. Your point being?

 

I admire the level of literacy exhibited in your post and I think I am obligated to remind you that judging by the amount of effort in composing your above post, you DID take my post seriously, and if not, personally.

Ouch.

Still awaiting a decent refutation. If you have to ability to come up with any, at all.

 

Like I said, no need to put on a public display of your resentment which derived from your inability to reason or logic. It's sheer futility.

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Like I said, no need to put on a public display of your resentment which derived from your inability to reason or logic. It's sheer futility.

 

Ah, finally, a libbie that isn't completely void of confidence in her/his intelligence. There exists vast wealth gap between Bill Gates and you. Explain how that is bad.

Going circles counting:0, Dodging the above question counting:0.

Not on his own you mean.

Which goal would that be, if I may ask? And if you duct-tape your broken car together, wouldn't it fail more spectacularly if it really fails, just like Roosevelt's patching up the depression?

The poor spend money — on what? Something the rich created because they wanted to be rich, I suppose? Take away/eliminate the incentive of the rich would help the economy, how?

How many skyscrapers you know of in Manhattan was invested by the poor?

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Truly fascinating. I thought I had waited enough long for people on the liberal side to make a decent, logical argument, they still come up with the equivalence of yelling "I don't like it even if it is true".

 

Ok then, you think making America a true haven for the rich would be good for the 10%? I think the rich dont have enough needs to satisfy the employment and wage needs of the bottom 10%. Moreover the worlds rich are not uniformly conspicuous consumers, most of their riches are tied up in assets. So really your argument is nonsense.

What do you think of that?

 

If the answer to the problem is simply to "increase minimum wage" and doing so wouldn't be detrimental to the economy... why not simply increase minimum wage to $500 or $1000 an hour. I mean that'll fix everything right?

 

I would like to see you explain this. It simply is too sketchy an argument to be taken as a general rule.

Yet all these tech billionaires have done it in a matter of a decade or two, let alone a lifetime.

Not exactly. With the P/E ratio of stocks being out of kilter with historical trendlines, it is capital market activity, not worker productivity, that is driving their wealth. It is the spending, not the work, that has taken over as the masses' contribution to society. We are a consumerism economy, not a production economy, and there is no way you are going to put more money into the hands of poor people without it ending up in the pockets of the rich people. If your desire were to level the playing field some, you would be better to wait for wage increases until the market takes a dive, otherwise you are propping up the inflated capital "wealth" of the billionaires.

And I have yet to see a serious comparable proposal. People going down to the park and raking leaves between texting on their smartphone won't justify the expense as it adds nothing to society. These groups went out and did great things, back-breaking things, like work on the Blue Ridge Parkway, build or repair bridges in rural areas, and the like. With modern standards, I do not see how you could add value to the country with anything they could construct today. If they put them to work repairing/insulating houses, tearing down blighted properties, and the like, then maybe one would see more support for such a program rather than just making pointless work like answering the phones, making copies, or doing other work that displaces existing workers.

 

Easy enough. The wealthiest individuals in society can spend money to influence the politicians that the poor person does not have access to.

They still relied on poor folks to make their money, or do you not know how websites make their money? Facebook has over 1.2 billion users, not every one of those users is wealthy.

Their seed money to be able to play the market was made because of the poor workers though.

I'm talking about having the poor supply work for things like the infrastructure, bridges, roads, railroads and the like. Tearing down blighted properties too. As for municipal beautification, to keep workers working, say that a park has to be cleaned by a certain time or the workers don't get paid.

 

Here's what trickle down economics looks like from rich people who own everything and eliminate regulations; http://www.samachar.com/Bottled-water-on-the-way-to-West-Virginia-oblqMTdabbg.html

 

Balderdash. Politicians are going to vote for who keeps them in office. The problem isn't so much the money as it is the partisan logrolling that goes on.

and not a single user is forced to pay a dime to use Facebook. They make their money on advertising and dealing in their own stocks, as does google.

How do you know that it was not a rich worker?

Most of those things displace existing workers save the urban blight and railroads are privately owned companies so you are advocating using tax dollars to make rich people richer (plus that has become a highly mechanized operation. It is actually interesting to watch them replace rails these days). I think you would be surprised to find how few people would sign up for such a program anyway, but unless it involves doing something that is not being done that adds some longer-term value to society then you are still wasting money.

 

First, you should never judge how easy or difficult it is to compose a post based on your own ability.

Second, you mistake a serious observation on an underlying posting strategy to present spurious content for taking that content seriously.

Hopefully such nuance is not beyond your own comprehension ability.

 

It's not balderdash. How do politicians remain in office? By being voted in. How do politicians get voted in? Well, conventional wisdom would say that it's because people vote for them, but in the two-party system of America, I would hazard a guess that most votes for a candidate are ostensibly votes against the other major party's candidate for that same office.

The logrolling you speak of is also influenced by the wealthy. The wealthy pay the way for candidates to get into office and then turn around and request special favors from their freshly-purchased legislator. Without that power, corporations would probably be seeking to have a vote in Congress, but they don't need to when they can decide which candidates run in the first place.

There are some estimates that, in Congress, 80-90% of the time, the campaign that spends the most money in a race wins that race. It's also worth noting that on average, 90% of the House of Representatives is reelected, partly due to gerrymandered districts that all but assure the reelection of incumbents. Some districts in the United States aren't even contested by both parties, so there is no hope of electing a new candidate, other districts are so heavily favored to one party, that the other party doesn't even pay attention to it.

I'm not going to explain the way internet advertising works to you.

You must be new to economics. The rich don't work on assembly lines.

Railroads may be a private enterprise, but without the railroads, the American economy grinds to a standstill. Thus, investment in rail infrastructure is a matter of national importance. Take a look around you, 95% of what you see spent some time on a railcar between being a raw material and being in your line of sight. I'm also not advocating the government do it for free, instead, enact legislation that would mandate all Class I trackage be of a certain standard by a certain date. Overall American infrastructure got a D- last year if I remember correctly.

In Green Bay, we have two railroad bridges over the Fox River, one was so dilapidated that it was decommissioned. Last year, a laker ran into the other one, it caused cross-river rail traffic to stop. Several businesses that are reliant on deliveries by Canadian National were forced to shut down for a few days, luckily the repairs were minor. Green Bay's Leo Frigo Bridge made national news a few months ago when the bridge deck sagged due to a failure in one of the bridge pilings. Downtown Green Bay was a freaking nightmare while the bridge was shut down, oh and, to add to the congestion of the bridge being closed down, guess what else runs through downtown? The Fox River, a major shipping artery for local businesses with several operating terminals and the Canadian National mainline between Chicago and Sault Ste. Marie.

Basically, what I'm advocating is a massive expansion and reorganization of Job Corps to make it more like the WPA, but also with an aim of taking unskilled unemployed and giving them skills to seek employment. I don't think the Job Corps is as successful because not many people know about it, I know I probably would have jumped at Job Corps had I learned about it in high school.

In the end, the rich will get richer, but if done right, the impoverished will get out of poverty first.

 

Logrolling and logjamming are internal deals between representatives having nothing to do with voters. A Congressman in Brooklyn has no need to care about grazing fees in Wyoming, but if the Wyoming Representative will support the Brooklyn's on bridge funding, then Brooklyn supports Wyoming on grazing fees.

Good, I accept your concession. Google and Facebook have created lots of millionaires and billionaires without charging users a fee, directly contradicting your previous assertion.

A worker is someone who works. It is not limited to "an assembly line" so I will assume you are new to the English language.

So you want to subsidize a big business with free workers they don't need and expect that will create not cost existing jobs? You would be better off subsidizing businesses that don't yet exist. It isn't like the railroad would never repair their own infrastructure so you plan adds nothing to infrastructure. Yes the US has horrible infrastructure but that is not the lack of more railroad lines. Our basic infrastructure like sewer/steam/water/gas lines are rusting out and need to be replaced or repaired (they have a neat injection system that allows them to replace some lines from within, basically building a pipe within an existing pipe for larger lines). Our electrical grid is going to soon be unable to keep up with demand on the lines, let alone production. But hey, let's bring back the caboose because that was a pointless union protected job well before they finally did away with them.

 

Apparently, some people have selective hearing, just as they do selective reading.

Wealth inequality is goo. It encourages most people to try harder, and move up the ladder.

But, a constantly increasing wealth inequality is a bad thing. As people on the high end get more and more wealth (and by that, get more and more power), the people on the lower end have less and less. There is a finite amount to go around.

When I was young, the average CEO made about 30 to 40 times the average worker. Now, that has risen to over 300 times the average worker. Laws have been passed that allow big investors to extort money from companies legally. That leaves less money for companies to expand and create new jobs. The government is controlled by money far more than it used to. That leaves the rest of us with less and less leverage to get a foothold on the ladder. The result has been a constant slow decline in the wealth of the average American, and a steady, fast increase in the wealth of the richest.

This is unsustainable. What will the rich do when they have it all? Start over with a new game of Monopoly?

I worked for a company that has many government contracts. Thay held seminars to explain the "new capitalism". Here is how it works today. It is NOT the system that made America great.

In years past, if a company showed a 15% profit, it was divided up among many. Investors got a piece of it, the taxman got a piece of it, employees got a piece in benefits and wage increases, the company got some to expand and create new jobs.

Today, it works like this.

The company commits to a certain profit, of which the investors get a stated piece. The company I worked for guaranteed 12.5%. Now, if we made a 12.5% profit, we really didn't make a profit. The investors got all of that. If we made 15%, then the investors got 12.5%, leaving everyone else with the drabs. Oh, the investors' share was now considered an expanse, so no taxes were paid on that part.

If we came in at a 12% profit, the investors would put the squeeze on the company to get that up where it belonged. They got it all, nothing left to grow with.

The last company worked for had the same problem. A predatory investment firm acquired 6% of the stock, and DEMANDED more profits. So layoffs were the result. Across the board, all divisions. The investment firm threatened to pull ALL their stock if they didn't get what they wanted. 6% is enough to start a landslide these day, and ruin a company.

In he movie Goodfellows, we see how the Mafia was structured that way. DeNiro's rant, when someone failed to pay him his weekly loan shark dues, has become famous. The guy tries to explain that his wife was sick, an that he would get the money next week. DeNiro erupts "Gimme my MONEY! I don't give a "bleep about your "bleep" wife. I want my "bleep, bleep, bleep" MONEY. Gimme my MONEY!! Gimme my money, or I'll break your "bleep" legs"

The wealthy investors are more refined Gimme the money, or I'll break your company". And, it's legal now.

And that is how the money is redistributed upwards. Whether it is company profits, 401k investments, Union dues investments. or anything else. The mafia culture exists in the upper echelons of our economy, and is growing. They take, we give, and some people seem to be purposely ignoring all this.

Time to wake up!

 

Sir:

You are correct, but your truthfulness and good sense will NOT be tolerated here.

(Trust me on that.)

 

This is ridiculous. I do not know how this line keeps getting repeated and no one cares it's false.

The rich cannot suck up all the money because they legally can't because of property rights. They can't take your money without compensating you. They can only take your money if you willingly give it to them in exchange for the good or service they provide. They get the placeholder for potential goods and services, and you get the benefit of the actual good or service. No wealth is transferred here, only its manifestation. Rich people get rich because they either a) own a monopoly, either state-enforced (like Canadian Telecom Companies) or natural (public utilities), b) play the stock market well, or c) have a good or service that many people want to purchase, such that many different people give their money to one person in exchange for what he makes/does.

There are other, more nuanced factors at play that are unfair, but the above is how things work for the most part, so I don't see what's unfair here.