What is the most import aspect of money?

The top 1% have as much wealth as the bottom 55%? Firstly, bollocks they do, and secondly who cares if they do?

600,000 combined have more wealth than 40 million people combined? If you say so.

Average wage here is 23K. Joe Average in this country is a 5%er.
My unemployed druggy mate on benefits is a 5%er.

Oh boy, the poverty here is sooo bad. People are being sooo abused by wealth disparity.

The richest people in the world moaning because they've met someone richer. Uh huh.
I don't think I'll bother taking them seriously myself.


Now we do get a small amount of people controlling very large sums of money, for example a fund manager, manages the investments of millions of people.
He decides where they will spend their money and this gives him a massive advantage with his own investments, and also with his own pay cheque.
His control of other peoples combined investments makes him very influential.
Typically however he is not the investor himself. It's not his money.

Same for a government treasurer.
So control of the money does create a rigged game.

The solution to a rigged game however only ever seems to be.... get someone bigger to rig it.
So I don't like George Soros so I elect Hilary Clinton.
Or whatever.

And that to me is a step in the wrong direction.
Making the whole thing much worse.

The smaller your economy, the more local and sustainable, the freer of such people you are.

 

I linked the page (you gave) that says it's the Top 10% that earn 50% of the UK's Wealth (here again), which compares to the 20%of Wealth that the UofCal study shows as owned by the Top 0.1% in the US. I did this for comparative purposes.

It is entirely possible that the Top 0.1% in the UK own around 20% of the total Wealth - as in the US. I wouldn't know. But neither is that the point I wish to make.

To my mind, the point worth making is this:
*Whatever the amount earned "Net-of-taxes" it is monstrous and far beyond the needs of any one person or family. And,
*So what does one do with that fortune upon death other than give it away some to philanthropy (for when they knock on Heaven's Door presumably) and/or leave the rest to the children or favored family/friends? (Meaning, what a waste!*)

The notion I am arguing here is simply this:
*What is the point of allowing anyone to garner such exaggerated Wealth (other than their own personal satisfaction). Is that the purpose of a market-economy? To make billionaires, whilst 14% of the rest of the population live below the Poverty Threshold? (That's the US figure, the UK figure is 9.8%.)
*In the US, there are certainly better objectives we can find for the revenues obtained by higher-taxed income at the upper end. Like making sure our kids get a Tertiary Education free, gratis and for nothing that will offer them higher remuneration from sustained and well-paid jobs.

*Far too much of that inheritance is lost carelessly by the inheritors who never learned how to sustain it. See here: 70% of Rich Families Lose Their Wealth by the Second Generation

 

WHAT IS DEBT?

Interest on debt is the cost of money-loans that consumers invest in the economy, yes, but the story does not end there.

The money added positively is counterbalanced by debt-interest that must be paid out of current income by borrowers. So, on the books of each person, the money borrowed to build a house sustains employment. But, that short term gain is eaten away in value by longer-term debt-repayments. That is, consumer income that would have been spent, but is employed instead to both maintain and reduce the debt.

When talking about "debt", one must look at the matter both ways - from a personal as well as from a nation's point-of-view. Our National Debt is rolled over up to a point where others want to hold it. Personal Debt does not have this advantage. You might roll-it-over once, but most banks wont let you do it twice. You MUST PAY OFF YOUR DEBT, thus reducing your Net Disposable-Income. (And ditto for companies, who also cannot repay their debt.)

National Debt thus has a duality: By means of loans, it can augment our individual capacity to buy goods/services; but if unpaid aggregately it impacts an economy negatively by promoting bank-failures. (Which is the key lesson that the recent SubPrime Mess should have taught us as a nation.)

Moreover, the key issue remains: Just how much national debt can be sustained by a country continually that must either pay it off or roll it over?

Any answers ... ?

 

To an extent this amount is infinite.

If I run a Ponzi scheme, the debt isn't maintained. Only the debt repayments are. The debt will never be repaid it will eventually be defaulted on.
The important question here is only "when?".

Is my repayment safe today?
Will it be safe in one year or ten years?

Can I get in and out before the crash.

A Ponzi scheme will keep working as long as taxable population keeps growing.
(Or as long as tax takes keep growing).


With regard to people getting rich, no skin off my nose is no skin off my nose.
I have no claim to anyone else's money. The world is full of resources that are no business of mine.

If you feel resources are being wasted, don't follow the same model with your own resources.

 

The adage here, is first generation makes it. Second generation maintains it. Third generation blows it.

I'm second generation. Mine will get passed on one more time. And personally I simply couldn't think of a better use of the money.
If some one is to blow my wealth, the person I love most is the person I wish to do it.

 

pure 100% liberal lies of course since they don't count $trillions in welfare entitlement payments earmarked for the poor. In USA for example they say 36 million are poor but govt spends $3 trillion a year or $83,000 per poor person on helping people!

 

best answer to to make debt illegal so govt has to pay its own way just as families do. Govt is the least efficient spender because it is spending others peoples money care free. Thus, we must pay back debt and lower our standard of living to pay back debt from which we gained nothing. It is like paying off a mortgage but not getting to live in the house. Its all thanks to liberals!!1

 

I don't know that making govt debt illegal is practical.

My example here is WW2. Without extensive borrowing in both world wars, I would not have been born.
My parents would have died as slaves.

So there are cases to be made where govt debt is advisable.
The problem is still as you say, that they are the least efficient investors around.
That the returns we get on taxation are pitiful. Gambling on the horses is preferred.

 

most Balanced Budget Amendments have emergency exceptions so that we can for example defend ourselves in a major war if necessary. An exception might require a 3/4 vote from Congress and mandate a 10 year payback at end of exception period followed by 2 year surplus that increases by 1 year for each exception within a 50 year period.

 

There's always an emergency.

A lawmaker makes the laws that say what he can and cannot spend. Oh yeah. That will stop him.

I certainly would like my government not to be able to take on debt as a sentiment, but more than this I would like them not to be able to tax. And then it wouldn't matter if they did take on debt.
But neither is a realistic expectation.

 

not if a 75% vote in Congress is required plus an immediate payback and surplus

 

Newts BBA passed the House and fell one vote short in Senate. Needless to say we are $20 trillion in debt today with nothing to show for it because Democrats killed Newt's BBA.

 

Is there an emergency today?

Is there a war or a hurricane or something?
A banking crash perhaps?
A whole city's industry gone bust.

There is always an emergency.

And how do you enforce immediate payback and surpluses?
Wait 4 years and then vote someone else?
Hope the next guy will reverse it? Maybe.

Might as well not bother at all.

If a law doesn't suit them, they are perfectly able to amend it until it does.

 

I wouldn't say you've got nothing to show for it.
May be not the best value for it.

But you live in a rich country and the money has been spent. So someone got it. Someone has enjoyed it.
And you've got the world's most kick arse military and space rockets and lasers, some **** hot schools and America's by an large a very decent place to be indeed.
High standard of living. Comfortable and peaceful way of life.

So yes in sentiment but always keep in the back of your mind,

You've had the money you've spent it. And that counts as a win!

 

Crippling people with more and more welfare over generations is not a win but rather a horrible treasonous tragedy perpetrated just to buy votes.

 

Crippling people with more and more welfare over generations is not a win but rather a horrible treasonous tragedy perpetrated

1) Actually the purpose of an amendment is to make it very very difficult to change that amendment .
2) there would not always be an emergency if 75% of the Congress and the president had to agree that there was
3) if freedom of speech is the law and a BBA is the law you enforce it with courts and prisons.

 

If 75% of congress and the President have to agree to get billions of free monies, they will agree and often.

And they will pass a law and it will apply to you and not them.

 

Basically, you've just established for us that you don't know the difference between "income" and "wealth".

 

Which is addressed to whom?

Quote your source when making such accusations, please ...

 

What is the most import aspect of money?

Spending it

.

 

Either the site is having issues or your PC is....

 

I hate Photobucket.



Anyway you can see I did source the quote, somehow you missed it.

-Cheers

 

Actually, if a poor person consistently gets $83,000 year and does not work for it they have tremendous wealth. A liberal will say they have no wealth but that is obviously absurd and just another excuse to move toward communism as if that would give poor people more real liberal wealth. Sorry to rock your world. Notice how 100% absurd liberalism really is?

 

1) no idea why on earth you would think that given there is rarely 75% support for legislation
2) if they did support it would not matter since they would have to pay it back and generate a surplus.

 

First, wealth is the accumulation of things of real value that people own. Even if it were true that the poor received $83,000 of assistance, if they don't have anything of real value as a result, they have no wealth.

Now let's deal with the reality of this situation.

$83,000? It takes leaps of Olympian mental gymnastics to believe a claim like that, that or you simply have to change the definition of welfare.

Were you reading THIS Cato Institute report or THIS Faux news headline?

So much fail I don't even know where to begin,l though I will say that given some of the things that were included as "welfare" in those reports, we could also call the US highway system welfare in which case, "the poor" have received 10's trillions of dollars in "wealfare"....LOL