I think everything should be private. My personal believes go much further than believes of others on this, I side with the government in this case - even the military should be private. Hey, that's sarcasm, but that's what US is doing - paying mercs to fight the wars.
In reality there is nothing that the Federal government should be doing beyond military border protection (and from what we are observing at this point, even this the government cannot do without running massive overspending programs that are clearly unnecessary and are designed to prop up monopolies.)
The difference between what I am talking about and the system that US has in many instances, where 'private' companies do government's bidding (like actual 'private' jails in US, 'private' health insurance, 'private' energy, 'private' weapons companies, etc.), is that in reality these so called private companies get public money. They also seem to get these public money without competing in terms of their work but in terms of lobbying (who gets a better relationship with the politicians that sign these bills and allow the funding to be allocated).
Yes, everybody would be much better off if there was as little government as possible in all areas of our lives.
Energy producers and manufacturers make more money if they don't clean up their waste
- exactly the reason why none of these businesses should have any special privileges and property rights must be strictly enforced.
Private fire departments have been tried. Cities burned.
- most of the history of human life the fire was handled by private means. Allowing part of a city to burn is a way to learn about risk and manage it better by private means, it's not a reason to switch that industry to public sector. There are no utilities public sector should be handling.
The redundancy costs of multiple electric companies are insane.
- none of your concern. That's private money and the only interest from you POV should be your final bill. Competition reduces your final bill. What shouldn't be happening is public subsidies to energy generators.
The bottom line is that some things are best handled as a monopoly.
And it shouldn't be mandatory anywhere, not just in US cities.
The real problem is that the garbage collection services are monopolized by government, the franchise licenses or however it's done, depending on locality, basically there is no competition in garbage collection.
It's like any large utility - it's taken over by special interests that use government power to prevent any competition.
What really should be happening is that this should be open to real competition, government shouldn't be providing any of these utility services and real competition would price garbage collection according to their processing capabilities.
So you may have a MONETARY INCENTIVE to separate your garbage at home, if some of the provided services were cheaper based on the clients separating the garbage before it's picked up.
That's the real way to do it. Maybe then there would be an incentive to innovate in this space and some of the garbage processors would find ways to separate the garbage in their collection facilities, but this would cost the end clients more.
It's all about choices and convenience. Maybe the ONLY thing that LOCAL government should be involved in is bylaws that say you can't DUMP garbage on the streets or whatever, but I am against this as well, it should be a strict property rights issue. But if a locality comes together to set up some bylaws, it's their right, though you KNOW it will be abused and special interests will get some special privileges based even on this level of government involvement.
Don't quack like a duck and walk like a duck and expect people not to think that you're a duck. You point to this fact. You make journal posts about your reputation on here. You put the link to your journal posts to remind people just how much you've written about it. You have all the appearances of somebody who has "an axe to grind" with the moderation system.
- I find this intriguing, you think I shouldn't be able to write what I want about the moderation system? Why not?
In fact I did write long ago that the moderation system here skews the results, clearly, when the same comment is moderated up and down multiple times then something is funny about the moderation, it's not, shall we say, objective.
However I can point it out and in fact complain about it if I want, but it doesn't mean I am asking for any 'government' intervention. I am appealing to the other moderators, making my case. I think you have a problem with people making their case. It's up to the individual moderators to decide how to spend their points and if I can persuade them to my side against a bias by a large number of moderators who I consider to be wrong on the matter, then good for me, but what the hell does it have to do with any 'government'?
YOU see something as political/economic, but other people don't. So they mod you accordingly
- and that's their problem, as they are wrong. Every aspect of economy and every question: what should BE done or what should WE do etc.etc., any question with an implied 'collective' decision must be addressed, because the implication is that it is the government that is going to do something and that is never the appropriate route to go.
See, in a market, other people has a say in deciding the value of your input. Here on/., people do this via mod points, and needless to say, other people have decided that your input is not as valuable as you think it is
- not necessarily true. Clearly the moderation points happen to be with different people at different times and once in a while my comments get moderated up and many times they are moderated down, but when they are moderated down, it is often done en mass, by a 'storm', it's done by somebody with an axe to grind.
You would need some sort of "government" intervention to force those who have the mod points to give them to you
- really? Where do you see me asking any 'government' for any intervention?
If I wrote something somewhere to the tune of: this moderation seems skewed, there is no suggestion there that some "government" (in quotes) should be involved in "fixing an injustice".
Nonsense, I post on various topics with different comments. When I do see a political/economics topic that is obviously misunderstood by the local Keynesians or simply by people ignorant of the issue I explain it.
Too bad for most of the problems are related to government intervention.
As to "libertard screed" - you head seems to be stuck in your ass.
A right wing advocate subverts the thread topic to blame the government. Thread topic: Tech giants don't create jobs. Poster: You can't be a tech giant! Too much regulation! This is all because of teh evil government! Blablabla.
Do you believe there is a binary (right/wrong) way to answer that question and do you think a discussion like that can go WITHOUT getting into politics and economics?
I get routinely down-moded en mass, with 5-20 down moderations in an hour sometimes. It's not a coincidence and my positions are always for the free market and against government (on anything pretty much.)
Nonsense. The only victims in this are the consumers and the overall economy is damaged. The government grows, that's what it does. It doesn't hurt the politicians who work in the government, they get paid the more various laws and regulations they come up with.
The large government supported monopolies use patents/copyrights as a way to prevent competition, but the real losers here are the consumers (and also the potential competitors) and the economy.
The markets have decided that iPhones and iPads sell really well, that's all there is to it. Whether there is a "need" for companies similar to Apple - it's up to the markets to decide.
However with every more the governments make sure that there will be no small competition to the large established businesses in any industry. Be it the food and drug industries, be it telcos or utilities (water/gas/sewer/roads/transportation/energy), be it entertainment, be it military, be it MS or Oracle or Apple or Google whatever.
The government implicitly that it wants only the large companies, that's why the interest rates for borrowing are pushed down, so no small business can get those loans and the credit is only available to the ever growing and ever and all consuming government.
The patent and copyright laws, the licensing by all these departments like SEC, FINRA, FDA, FCC, whatever. Everything is done so that there will be no competition.
Try and start your own investment business today, go ahead. Start it from scratch. If you are not already wealthy (like a millionaire), you won't even move past the first hurdles of licensing across all states and you CANNOT ADVERTISE your success, it's illegal in the investment business, it's a direct help to the established businesses.
Don't forget the added costs of things like the Patriot act, where you must be an unpaid spy for the IRS and CIA and FBI, spying on your own clients.
Try and start your own store chain. Try and cut through all the red tape of all the licensing and all the labor regulations. Good luck.
Sure, you can start a software company, your own 'Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net' from your house. Try and sell some of your software though, it's a tossup. You are probably going to be attacked by armies of lawyers based on anything, from patents to copyrights, it doesn't have to be true, but if you become successful enough, they'll "buy you out".
Finally some common sense. This means that finally a government may end up undoing the DAMAGE that it CREATED in the first place, when it came up with all these copyright ideas.
Same goes for patents, by the way, the patents have to go.
Copyrights and patents - in most cases these are tools to create and promote monopolies and PREVENT competition and prevent any sort of innovation and undermine the economy. It's government that started this nonsense, it must be government to end it.
No no, that's not what they are going to do. The top bras will sit on the ground floor and the lower in rank you are the lower the floor you'll be located on, this way the sewage doesn't have to be pumped out, you put on your wet suit and maybe a mask, take a flash light and sort of swim to your desk. What you'll be swimming in depends on how important your place in the corporate pyramid is.
These eminent domain cases are decided by courts, what's a 'fair value'. Why is the land taken away? It's always a lobbying effort by some large entity, maybe a government granted monopoly in infrastructure or some such, so a large company uses government ties to steal property, that's all there is to it.
In fact I never said that the Constitution was perfect in any way, I only say that whatever imperfect Constitution USA has, has been usurped and devoid of meaning because the government doesn't abide by it.
But the Constitution is far from perfect. Things like 'eminent domain', the missing part of it that should have put an end to any federal government take over the economy ( so all this 'general welfare' nonsense that gets interpreted in a way that grows government further and undermines people's rights). The problem with the definition of 'excise', which has been usurped also to mean income rather than just sales/import taxes. There are many things in the Constitution that are not well thought through.
But the government doesn't even abide by whatever law that is imposed upon it in the existing document.
That's right, any new laws that are passed by the government undermine the stability of the economy and society, because those are the basic rules and if they are changed then the society/economy cannot be stable in principle.
It's like expecting stars and planets and life to appear in a Universe that has physics laws changing all the time. Can you imagine having a star with planets around it if the basic laws of nature were changing in a random fashion?
F=MA today, F=1/3MA next year, F=5A 3 years from now. Go ahead, build me a solar system.
I'll give you a simple example before I head off, so you'd understand something about money and what wealth is:
Imagine a world with 10% of population working for a small number of large companies, say 100 companies and by law there can be no more companies, so there cannot be 101 company, the laws only allow 100 companies. 90% of people don't have jobs in this world, so maybe they live off taxes or whatever they can forage
If the 90% of people are given equal votes with everybody else, they will vote in politicians who will tax the 10% of working people to feed the 90%.
So now the 90% are getting money that is taken away from the producing part of the population and they are spending this money on products produced by that 10%.
OK, so now the purchasing power of the 10% is greatly diminished, their money is taken away and they are still producing stuff and they have to work MORE and HARDER because they now must satisfy the demand of 100% of population and not of 10%, but the money they are getting for their products is about the same, because the prices went way down with all the extra capacity.
Now ask yourself this: if there was no way for the 90% to tax the 10%, would the 10% be worse off or better? Your argument is - they will be worse off. That's nonsense.
Why is it nonsense? The 100 companies are still the only ones producing the stuff that is consumed by 100% of population. So the companies have to work more to feed not the 10%, but 100%. The 10% have their money taken away and they can buy much less with their money. The money is stolen and the prices went down, this is good for the 90%.
But the 10% are getting NOTHING from the 90% except for extra work they have to do.
--
This is NOT the model that we have, it's a simplified model (given that there are only 100 legal companies and no more are allowed to exist), but it explains something to you: we don't trade for MONEY, we trade for THINGS.
The 10% trade with each other for things they create in their 100 companies. They don't trade with the 90% unless government takes their money away as taxes to give some of that money to the 90%. There is nothing to trade for with the 90%.
---
Again, this is not the model we have, but it's a simple explanation of what money and wealth and trade is.
- yes, a symptom of government interference with the competition in the markets.
The real problem is that when you concentrate the wealth in a small percentage of the population with more than enough wealth than they could ever spend.. that money just sits there, rather than flowing through the economy.
- pure nonsense.
Steve Jobs heirs will have to pay around 900 million dollars in death taxes. They will have to SELL their shares in various companies, that's not money 'sitting' somewhere, that's money that is working in the economy.
Few people hold their money under their mattress (figuratively or literally, whatever), but the number of people doing it increases as government destroys ability to earn interest (0% interest and huge inflation) with all this anti-business policies of income/payroll taxes and various regulations and competition destruction with all the unelected offices that create the regulation and all the counterfeiting and borrowing.
So people buy hard assets that are just bought to PROTECT against the ill effects of inflation that is created by the government. So people buy gold, silver, other commodities, they take possession because they don't want the counterparty risk either. That's a response to a stagnating economy, which stagnates due to gov't intervention.
People who have money want to grow their money, and since they already have the large incomes, it means that they know how to grow their money, definitely they do it in the private sector (unless they are connected to the corrupt government one way or another), that's why we want as little government as possible - so people would use their money productively.
Again, Jobs didn't have to work a day past 1985, yet he did. He didn't spend 1% of his money, so what? It's not sitting around, it's now going to be a firesale probably, and Warren Buffet will benefit from his position as the largest investor into BH yet again (maybe not this time, Apple shares probably won't go down much in this firesale, but they will go down). Buffet is large hypocrite, making money off death taxes by restructuring companies that are destroyed in fire sales when large fortunes are taxed after death. Oh, also he pays whatever tax that is corporate tax of his company, of which he owns about 30%, so whatever his corporation pays is his first tax, then it's 15% dividend tax. All of this is bad for the economy of-course.
Any extraction of private funds from the economy and waste of this funds by government is a bad thing, it literally destroys jobs and companies.
Put the money in the hands of people that need it, and they will spend it.. on food, clothing, things they need to survive, and maybe a few luxuries.
- no, this is totally unproductive way to trade.
I wouldn't want my products to be sold to people who don't produce anything and live on welfare, because trade is about comparative advantage, not about nominal dollar signs. I don't want to trade with people who can't give me any valuable product/service in return for the pieces of paper they get for free.
What's stupid about this is that the wealthy should understand this. They should understand that their money gains value when the economy is strong. They should understand that stockpiling their money makes it worth LESS.
- no, what is stupid is that you don't understand anything about money and you think that the people who make money don't understand it.
rather than reading whatever books written way POST FACTUM (this one was published on November 16, 2010), why instead not look at the predictions by the people who actually understand the economy and predicted this debt crisis because they understand the underlying principles that lead to these calamities and here is a good example from 2006. These people explain the fact that they could see the incoming collapse because they simply looked at the consequences of government regulations such as easy money policy, easy housing policy (destruction of lending standards), all this jazz.
income disparity - this is a perceived problem, not a real one, because the real problem is not the difference in income levels but poverty. Difference in income levels increases with the economy going global, but also with the destruction of competition that governments are involved in with every law that favors monopolies.
So in that attached article there is a graph, you can look at it or skip it and pretend it doesn't matter that the 1970s started the next large round of income inequality.
Slashdot Mirror
I think everything should be private. My personal believes go much further than believes of others on this, I side with the government in this case - even the military should be private. Hey, that's sarcasm, but that's what US is doing - paying mercs to fight the wars.
In reality there is nothing that the Federal government should be doing beyond military border protection (and from what we are observing at this point, even this the government cannot do without running massive overspending programs that are clearly unnecessary and are designed to prop up monopolies.)
The difference between what I am talking about and the system that US has in many instances, where 'private' companies do government's bidding (like actual 'private' jails in US, 'private' health insurance, 'private' energy, 'private' weapons companies, etc.), is that in reality these so called private companies get public money. They also seem to get these public money without competing in terms of their work but in terms of lobbying (who gets a better relationship with the politicians that sign these bills and allow the funding to be allocated).
Yes, everybody would be much better off if there was as little government as possible in all areas of our lives.
Insurance companies make more money if you die.
- ? Life insurance makes more money if you die?
Energy producers and manufacturers make more money if they don't clean up their waste
- exactly the reason why none of these businesses should have any special privileges and property rights must be strictly enforced.
Private fire departments have been tried. Cities burned.
- most of the history of human life the fire was handled by private means. Allowing part of a city to burn is a way to learn about risk and manage it better by private means, it's not a reason to switch that industry to public sector. There are no utilities public sector should be handling.
The redundancy costs of multiple electric companies are insane.
- none of your concern. That's private money and the only interest from you POV should be your final bill. Competition reduces your final bill. What shouldn't be happening is public subsidies to energy generators.
The bottom line is that some things are best handled as a monopoly.
- always false.
That's not at all a rational approach
- because?
No.
And it shouldn't be mandatory anywhere, not just in US cities.
The real problem is that the garbage collection services are monopolized by government, the franchise licenses or however it's done, depending on locality, basically there is no competition in garbage collection.
It's like any large utility - it's taken over by special interests that use government power to prevent any competition.
What really should be happening is that this should be open to real competition, government shouldn't be providing any of these utility services and real competition would price garbage collection according to their processing capabilities.
So you may have a MONETARY INCENTIVE to separate your garbage at home, if some of the provided services were cheaper based on the clients separating the garbage before it's picked up.
That's the real way to do it. Maybe then there would be an incentive to innovate in this space and some of the garbage processors would find ways to separate the garbage in their collection facilities, but this would cost the end clients more.
It's all about choices and convenience. Maybe the ONLY thing that LOCAL government should be involved in is bylaws that say you can't DUMP garbage on the streets or whatever, but I am against this as well, it should be a strict property rights issue. But if a locality comes together to set up some bylaws, it's their right, though you KNOW it will be abused and special interests will get some special privileges based even on this level of government involvement.
But hey, that's again a rational approach to the problem, and it doesn't work well with people here, who don't like the rational approaches.
Don't quack like a duck and walk like a duck and expect people not to think that you're a duck. You point to this fact. You make journal posts about your reputation on here. You put the link to your journal posts to remind people just how much you've written about it. You have all the appearances of somebody who has "an axe to grind" with the moderation system.
- I find this intriguing, you think I shouldn't be able to write what I want about the moderation system? Why not?
In fact I did write long ago that the moderation system here skews the results, clearly, when the same comment is moderated up and down multiple times then something is funny about the moderation, it's not, shall we say, objective.
However I can point it out and in fact complain about it if I want, but it doesn't mean I am asking for any 'government' intervention. I am appealing to the other moderators, making my case. I think you have a problem with people making their case. It's up to the individual moderators to decide how to spend their points and if I can persuade them to my side against a bias by a large number of moderators who I consider to be wrong on the matter, then good for me, but what the hell does it have to do with any 'government'?
You have no clarity in your thinking.
YOU see something as political/economic, but other people don't. So they mod you accordingly
- and that's their problem, as they are wrong. Every aspect of economy and every question: what should BE done or what should WE do etc.etc., any question with an implied 'collective' decision must be addressed, because the implication is that it is the government that is going to do something and that is never the appropriate route to go.
See, in a market, other people has a say in deciding the value of your input. Here on /., people do this via mod points, and needless to say, other people have decided that your input is not as valuable as you think it is
- not necessarily true. Clearly the moderation points happen to be with different people at different times and once in a while my comments get moderated up and many times they are moderated down, but when they are moderated down, it is often done en mass, by a 'storm', it's done by somebody with an axe to grind.
You would need some sort of "government" intervention to force those who have the mod points to give them to you
- really? Where do you see me asking any 'government' for any intervention?
If I wrote something somewhere to the tune of: this moderation seems skewed, there is no suggestion there that some "government" (in quotes) should be involved in "fixing an injustice".
It's an observation of fact.
Nonsense, I post on various topics with different comments. When I do see a political/economics topic that is obviously misunderstood by the local Keynesians or simply by people ignorant of the issue I explain it.
Too bad for most of the problems are related to government intervention.
As to "libertard screed" - you head seems to be stuck in your ass.
A right wing advocate subverts the thread topic to blame the government. Thread topic: Tech giants don't create jobs. Poster: You can't be a tech giant! Too much regulation! This is all because of teh evil government! Blablabla.
- what is 'right wing', please?
This was the story name:
Why America Doesn't Need More Tech Giants Like Apple
Do you believe there is a binary (right/wrong) way to answer that question and do you think a discussion like that can go WITHOUT getting into politics and economics?
But it wouldn't be the first time that my comments got moderated down just because people like you think they are 'right wing'.
or anything that challenges the reality and supremacy of The Invisible Hand
- wait wait wait, are you saying that the overwhelming majority of opinion on this site is pro-free market?
HA!
Well that's not true at all and I have history to prove it.
I get routinely down-moded en mass, with 5-20 down moderations in an hour sometimes. It's not a coincidence and my positions are always for the free market and against government (on anything pretty much.)
Nonsense. The only victims in this are the consumers and the overall economy is damaged. The government grows, that's what it does. It doesn't hurt the politicians who work in the government, they get paid the more various laws and regulations they come up with.
The large government supported monopolies use patents/copyrights as a way to prevent competition, but the real losers here are the consumers (and also the potential competitors) and the economy.
Maybe with a not so quick Google search there is different data that comes up?
Career Entries Gross (USD) Average Gross Salary Average Net Salary
General Manager 8 $93,657 595,656 CNY 447,625 CNY
Director 5 $88,050 560,000 CNY 446,000 CNY
IT Manager 8 $69,055 439,187 CNY 348,081 CNY
Manager 7 $59,973 381,428 CNY 300,285 CNY
IT Project Manager 6 $51,834 329,666 CNY 252,666 CNY
Human Resources Manager 6 $43,606 277,333 CNY 209,166 CNY
Architect 6 $35,901 228,333 CNY 181,736 CNY
Manufacturing 11 $32,547 207,000 CNY 176,529 CNY
Engineering Manager 6 $32,128 204,333 CNY 167,500 CNY
Marketing Manager 7 $31,706 201,651 CNY 158,366 CNY
Sales Manager 8 $31,184 198,330 CNY 170,486 CNY
Software Engineer 6 $27,004 171,746 CNY 135,659 CNY
Mechanical Engineer 6 $24,552 156,150 CNY 113,333 CNY
Accountant 5 $18,624 118,450 CNY 86,800 CNY
University Professor 5 $18,006 114,515 CNY 101,800 CNY
Manufacturing Assembly Worker 5 $13,774 87,600 CNY 74,000 CNY
The markets have decided that iPhones and iPads sell really well, that's all there is to it. Whether there is a "need" for companies similar to Apple - it's up to the markets to decide.
However with every more the governments make sure that there will be no small competition to the large established businesses in any industry. Be it the food and drug industries, be it telcos or utilities (water/gas/sewer/roads/transportation/energy), be it entertainment, be it military, be it MS or Oracle or Apple or Google whatever.
The government implicitly that it wants only the large companies, that's why the interest rates for borrowing are pushed down, so no small business can get those loans and the credit is only available to the ever growing and ever and all consuming government.
The patent and copyright laws, the licensing by all these departments like SEC, FINRA, FDA, FCC, whatever. Everything is done so that there will be no competition.
Try and start your own investment business today, go ahead. Start it from scratch. If you are not already wealthy (like a millionaire), you won't even move past the first hurdles of licensing across all states and you CANNOT ADVERTISE your success, it's illegal in the investment business, it's a direct help to the established businesses.
Don't forget the added costs of things like the Patriot act, where you must be an unpaid spy for the IRS and CIA and FBI, spying on your own clients.
Try and start your own store chain. Try and cut through all the red tape of all the licensing and all the labor regulations. Good luck.
Sure, you can start a software company, your own 'Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net' from your house. Try and sell some of your software though, it's a tossup. You are probably going to be attacked by armies of lawyers based on anything, from patents to copyrights, it doesn't have to be true, but if you become successful enough, they'll "buy you out".
so I looked at the list in that document, names like http://www.2012-louisvuitton.net/ and http://www.spotbags.co/ and http://www.hahabags.net/ all that jazz.
If they are now posted on /. will google be forced to delist /. as well?
Finally some common sense. This means that finally a government may end up undoing the DAMAGE that it CREATED in the first place, when it came up with all these copyright ideas.
Same goes for patents, by the way, the patents have to go.
Copyrights and patents - in most cases these are tools to create and promote monopolies and PREVENT competition and prevent any sort of innovation and undermine the economy. It's government that started this nonsense, it must be government to end it.
no. The more commodity software exists the more possibility there is to use it to build actual needed business solutions.
No no, that's not what they are going to do. The top bras will sit on the ground floor and the lower in rank you are the lower the floor you'll be located on, this way the sewage doesn't have to be pumped out, you put on your wet suit and maybe a mask, take a flash light and sort of swim to your desk. What you'll be swimming in depends on how important your place in the corporate pyramid is.
culprits of what? I have no idea what this comment is trying to say.
Well, plenty of economies do not have the same burdens that USA has set up in front of its business, so USA was such an economy before 1913.
Today China, Singapore, Switzerland are closer to those economies than USA. Nothing is perfect, but nothing is ever perfect.
USA had a huge depression, worse than the one today maybe in 1921. Hardin cut federal spending b 70% and in 2 years US was back to full employment.
I addressed this here.
These eminent domain cases are decided by courts, what's a 'fair value'. Why is the land taken away? It's always a lobbying effort by some large entity, maybe a government granted monopoly in infrastructure or some such, so a large company uses government ties to steal property, that's all there is to it.
In fact I never said that the Constitution was perfect in any way, I only say that whatever imperfect Constitution USA has, has been usurped and devoid of meaning because the government doesn't abide by it.
But the Constitution is far from perfect. Things like 'eminent domain', the missing part of it that should have put an end to any federal government take over the economy ( so all this 'general welfare' nonsense that gets interpreted in a way that grows government further and undermines people's rights). The problem with the definition of 'excise', which has been usurped also to mean income rather than just sales/import taxes. There are many things in the Constitution that are not well thought through.
But the government doesn't even abide by whatever law that is imposed upon it in the existing document.
In fact I think the Constitution is flawed because it allows the Congress/Senate/White house to pass NEW laws. Never mind the fact that almost all business regulations are passed by unelected federal government offices (various departments like EPA, FDA, etc.).
That's right, any new laws that are passed by the government undermine the stability of the economy and society, because those are the basic rules and if they are changed then the society/economy cannot be stable in principle.
It's like expecting stars and planets and life to appear in a Universe that has physics laws changing all the time. Can you imagine having a star with planets around it if the basic laws of nature were changing in a random fashion?
F=MA today, F=1/3MA next year, F=5A 3 years from now. Go ahead, build me a solar system.
I'll give you a simple example before I head off, so you'd understand something about money and what wealth is:
Imagine a world with 10% of population working for a small number of large companies, say 100 companies and by law there can be no more companies, so there cannot be 101 company, the laws only allow 100 companies. 90% of people don't have jobs in this world, so maybe they live off taxes or whatever they can forage
If the 90% of people are given equal votes with everybody else, they will vote in politicians who will tax the 10% of working people to feed the 90%.
So now the 90% are getting money that is taken away from the producing part of the population and they are spending this money on products produced by that 10%.
OK, so now the purchasing power of the 10% is greatly diminished, their money is taken away and they are still producing stuff and they have to work MORE and HARDER because they now must satisfy the demand of 100% of population and not of 10%, but the money they are getting for their products is about the same, because the prices went way down with all the extra capacity.
Now ask yourself this: if there was no way for the 90% to tax the 10%, would the 10% be worse off or better? Your argument is - they will be worse off. That's nonsense.
Why is it nonsense? The 100 companies are still the only ones producing the stuff that is consumed by 100% of population. So the companies have to work more to feed not the 10%, but 100%. The 10% have their money taken away and they can buy much less with their money. The money is stolen and the prices went down, this is good for the 90%.
But the 10% are getting NOTHING from the 90% except for extra work they have to do.
--
This is NOT the model that we have, it's a simplified model (given that there are only 100 legal companies and no more are allowed to exist), but it explains something to you: we don't trade for MONEY, we trade for THINGS.
The 10% trade with each other for things they create in their 100 companies. They don't trade with the 90% unless government takes their money away as taxes to give some of that money to the 90%. There is nothing to trade for with the 90%.
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Again, this is not the model we have, but it's a simple explanation of what money and wealth and trade is.
Income disparity is a symptom.
- yes, a symptom of government interference with the competition in the markets.
The real problem is that when you concentrate the wealth in a small percentage of the population with more than enough wealth than they could ever spend.. that money just sits there, rather than flowing through the economy.
- pure nonsense.
Steve Jobs heirs will have to pay around 900 million dollars in death taxes. They will have to SELL their shares in various companies, that's not money 'sitting' somewhere, that's money that is working in the economy.
Few people hold their money under their mattress (figuratively or literally, whatever), but the number of people doing it increases as government destroys ability to earn interest (0% interest and huge inflation) with all this anti-business policies of income/payroll taxes and various regulations and competition destruction with all the unelected offices that create the regulation and all the counterfeiting and borrowing.
So people buy hard assets that are just bought to PROTECT against the ill effects of inflation that is created by the government. So people buy gold, silver, other commodities, they take possession because they don't want the counterparty risk either. That's a response to a stagnating economy, which stagnates due to gov't intervention.
People who have money want to grow their money, and since they already have the large incomes, it means that they know how to grow their money, definitely they do it in the private sector (unless they are connected to the corrupt government one way or another), that's why we want as little government as possible - so people would use their money productively.
Again, Jobs didn't have to work a day past 1985, yet he did. He didn't spend 1% of his money, so what? It's not sitting around, it's now going to be a firesale probably, and Warren Buffet will benefit from his position as the largest investor into BH yet again (maybe not this time, Apple shares probably won't go down much in this firesale, but they will go down). Buffet is large hypocrite, making money off death taxes by restructuring companies that are destroyed in fire sales when large fortunes are taxed after death. Oh, also he pays whatever tax that is corporate tax of his company, of which he owns about 30%, so whatever his corporation pays is his first tax, then it's 15% dividend tax. All of this is bad for the economy of-course.
Any extraction of private funds from the economy and waste of this funds by government is a bad thing, it literally destroys jobs and companies.
Put the money in the hands of people that need it, and they will spend it.. on food, clothing, things they need to survive, and maybe a few luxuries.
- no, this is totally unproductive way to trade.
I wouldn't want my products to be sold to people who don't produce anything and live on welfare, because trade is about comparative advantage, not about nominal dollar signs. I don't want to trade with people who can't give me any valuable product/service in return for the pieces of paper they get for free.
What's stupid about this is that the wealthy should understand this. They should understand that their money gains value when the economy is strong. They should understand that stockpiling their money makes it worth LESS.
- no, what is stupid is that you don't understand anything about money and you think that the people who make money don't understand it.
Is it 2 minutes before 12 o'clock yet?
rather than reading whatever books written way POST FACTUM (this one was published on November 16, 2010), why instead not look at the predictions by the people who actually understand the economy and predicted this debt crisis because they understand the underlying principles that lead to these calamities and here is a good example from 2006. These people explain the fact that they could see the incoming collapse because they simply looked at the consequences of government regulations such as easy money policy, easy housing policy (destruction of lending standards), all this jazz.
income disparity - this is a perceived problem, not a real one, because the real problem is not the difference in income levels but poverty. Difference in income levels increases with the economy going global, but also with the destruction of competition that governments are involved in with every law that favors monopolies.
So in that attached article there is a graph, you can look at it or skip it and pretend it doesn't matter that the 1970s started the next large round of income inequality.
Wishful thinking.
I wrote some time ago answering a question: who needs who more in China/USA relationship.
I always prefer to be on the side of producer and creditor rather than consumer and debtor (putting it mildly).