That's my point, the study and a whole lot of life is all about perspective. My hypothetical young person percieves themselves as a person of modest means because they probably live in an area that places their income in the lower stratas of the people around them (someone making $40,000 in San Fran, NYC, DC etc isn't in the upper half of the income distribution) which is what they are comparing themselves. However, they are slowly accumulating assets (even if just in the 401(k) and the equity in their home (from principle payments). If they did no other saving, by the time retirment comes, they will be in the top 1% of the global wealthy (there are a whole lot of people out there who will never accumulate assets equal to what they would save in a month).
I went and looked up the study and the minimum wealth to be in the top 1% was $500,000 (10% was $80,000).
I wasn't saying it was a problem, but to try to compare a random definition of rich (which typically means someone who has more than me) with paying their fair share of the tax burden isn't a problem esily solved. I am certainly not advocating going taxing unrealized capital gains. I was also pointing out that the tax code is pretty fair when comparing tax distributions with income distributions (ie the top y% earn X% of the national income and pay something very near X% of taxes).
I didn't want to make it a long post with all the math, but was essentially assuming you were doing 3-5% above inflation with that return. Which still left you at roughly the same standard that would get you into the top 1%. You also will spend the other 95% of your income on at least a few non-temporary assets which would mean clearing a half million mark (in real dollars) pretty easily.
Of course rolled up in that are tons of assumptions, which either of us could think of in a few minutes, but the key point that I wanted to indirectly make (that isn't very clear) is that a young person's largest asset isn't monetary it's their future earnings (which should represent real as well as nominal) increases in wealth.
There is a whole profession dedicated to the study of just the questions you were asking, actuarial science. I've only just scratched the surface of what an actuary could do to answer your questions, but you probably won't be getting a full report from them.
It depends on what you mean by rich. To some people rich means "earns a high income." In the US, share of income is pretty closely correllated with share of income taxes paid (this is all personal taxes corporate taxes are a whole other subject). To others rich means has a large amount of resources available. Share of wealth is far lower correllated with share of taxes paid (because if you don't earn cash from an asset the IRS ignores it (with the exception of a few types of bonds in both directions). Take Bill Gates as an example (for this please don't consider his foundation). Bill owns 957 million shares of Microsoft but hasn't paid himself a salary. The IRS doesn't tax assets though. So his tax bill would only be due on the $354 million in dividends he was paid this year (at that level his income would be harder to shelter so he probably paid something near $140 million in taxes). So we have a guy who's wealth is 1 (in the US), income is probably in the top 100, and tax bill was also in the top 100 (I'd be shocked if his rank in income and taxes paid were more than 3-4 places apart, but both are probably 10s of places from his rank in wealth. Buffett is even further diverged (because his company doesn't pay dividends and his salary is pretty modest $100,000. He mentioned his tax rate once (in an example using his secretary) so he probably is still paying about $25,000 in taxes.
You could easily make the same statement about Goldman-Sachs which after it went public a few years ago there were lots of people with "fuck you money" as they would put it. Plenty of folks did leave (a more than decent number of hedge fund managers have the firm on their resume), but it doesn't really seem to slow their ability to continue to attract (and retain) top talent.
The top 1% only required wealth of $500,000 which a USer making $40,000 annually should easily eclipse with a 5% 401(k) contribution (assuming you have an employer match) and an 8% return. I'd guess that almost all of the college graduates here are above the 10% level (don't forget the value of cars, computers, clothes, any retirement accounts and such).
If it's wealth it would greatly depend on how wealthy I was, to stop a 10% chance I wouldn't probably pay more than $500,000 (perhaps that number would increase if I were wealthier) but I can think of a whole lot of things I'd rather have with the money than that little bit of piece of mind.
That's how I was thinking about it, I can't say for my child, but if I were the child I would not want 10% of my future resources to be spent on that cure, I'd rather take the odds (and enjoy the extra income over a potentially shortened life). I interpreted the original question as lifetime earnings, if it's current wealth (accumulated assets to date) I'd happily pay for the cure as 10% of my current accumulated assets are a far smaller number than 10% of my total earnings.
The Economist isn't a magazine for economists (they have their own journals), the term economist was originally one that is more like statesman or diplomat today. It's a right leaning (in European terms) newspaper with a minor focus on business (the major focus is on global relations). It tends to write about areas roughly in proportion to their global output and most articles that I know something about the subject tend to be more exhaustive than other newspaper articles.
Middle class in North Korea means you had enough rice to cut the hunger pangs enough to fall asleep tonight. This was a country that stripped all the bark off it's trees in an attempt to find enough calories to survive!
Or perhaps they wanted other potential dissenters to know that our spies have a longer reach than you might guess, and no one will stop us after the next headline from Brittany/the Royals/Idol/Big Brother shows up.
The government operates currency functions very conservativly because they do not want to take any risks that could reduce the percieved legitimacy of the dollar as the world's primary reserve currency (one of the major reasons for that is the nation's financial stabilty). Changes to the currency while very minor risk reducing that percieved stability.
Anti-aircraft carrier missiles? You do realize that essentially all of our navy is designed around the principle of protecting a carrier from harm, they generally travel in groups or task forces with an AGEIS cruiser (to spot those missiles), an attack sub or two (to hit any submarines that are operating in the area--undersea missiles), several crusiers and destroyers to further attack defend against air and submarines, typically a crusier that launches cruise missles (anti-surface ships), and a bevy of planes to sink/bomb whatever it was that you were planning to launch the missle from. Occasionally they toss a battle ship on there for land bombardment. That's sorta the point of being an aircraft carrier (the planes do the fighting--if the battle even gets to the carrier you've probably failed your mission). 60 years of history has said that carrier battle groups are the best thing going in navel warfare.
That's a factor (mostly on the cost), it also includesthe infastructure (such as Carriers, cargo planes, and logistical ships) that would allow a force to operate in hostile territory for a long period without dying (even if it's expensive). The ability to support your troops over distance is a huge factor in force projection. I think of it as arrows of various shapes and sizes, the width of the arrow is military strength, the length of the arrow is how far you can support them, most country's arrows narrow at the end, it's all a matter of how quickly. If you play Civ, think about how much harder it is to go to war on another island vs on the same island as your capital. Sure you may have knights and immortals vs their spearmen but if you only have two galleys then you probably won't be winning the interisland war.
A quick real world example is Taiwan, it's perhaps 90 miles off the coast of PRC and 4500 from the US (2500 from Hawaii), but the US Navy would make short work of a PRC amphibious assult, that's because we have far more force projection than they have, currently.
China includes folks who have more in common with our TSA and border patrol as part of that 3.5 million "regular" military. The key factor that folks are hinting at is what planners call force projection or the ability to support troops halfway around the world which is where our military is probably 10x anyone else's.
Well it probably gets overused as a marketing gimmick today, but I'd say the origins of Fat Tuesday justify it having a marketing use. It's been a party before you had to fast for 40 days for well over 500 years (and what is a party but a big marketing exercise in more ways than one). I'd be shocked given several theme's in the store (like the mermaid on the cup, if the Starbuck name isn't from the first mate of the Pequod, remember that before it was a national chain Starbuck's was a coffeeshop in Pike's Market. Now it's been a few years since I read the book, and I don't recall much relation to coffee, but he sure fits many of the mores and attitudes of most of the folks I've known from the Northwest. Is it tremendously overexposed now? Sure, but what skin is it off your nose if you don't buy their overpriced crap?
Humanity has always observed certain days as festival days and we generally like to do things in groups so if knowing that a few other folks are knocking out a few purchases this morning gives you a little buzz of happiness why knock it even if another group is earning something off the transaction?
You might enjoy the book "Stumbling upon Happiness" in which a professor examines what really makes us happy (generally simple little pleasures that we quickly forget) vs the big thing that we hold in high expectation (and while they can be very pleasurable they are also highly volatile in their result leading to far less total happiness than our effort applied).
You can't take your resources with you so you might as well smell the roses and find those things that make you happy (I'm not saying it has to be coffee or ice cream or even relishing the smug superiority above all peons scurrying about their day) but you probably aren't going to win many friends trying to convince not to do something that provides theirs.
Personally, I'll take a discount on a gift or purchase that I was highly likely to make in the next few weeks anyway or perhaps it meant that I could now afford something that they wanted more than my original gift just because some marketing firm decided to call today "cyber-Monday" as opposed to Monday the 27th. If that's the net result of a retarded and pointless day, than so be it, I'll let you know what they thought of their gifts next year.
Just looking at oil (not dry goods like most metals, grains, and coal), there are about 600 big tanker ships that essentially sail about 330-350 days a year (depending on how long their voyage is and how long it takes to fill and empty them). Each ship burns about a ton of oil per sailing day, so if this reduced usage by the 30%-40% it would greatly reduce pollution in the Oceans (and about 100 gallons per day per ship). Not bad for something as simple as blowing a few bubbles outside the ship's hull.
Successful organizations arise anew from the ashes of their destruction (and you thought the Phoenix was just a cool story to scare children). Paragraph 2 and 3 in the middle life section of the Nintendo article covers the rise, dilution, decline, and fall of Nintendo (which had diversified into taxi's, love hotels, network TV, food, and other products) resulting in near bankruptcy before they hired Miyamoto and completely changed the company's focus.
Fat Tuesday has some significance as it was the last day you could eat meat (pretty much the main source of fat calories in a European diet) before Lent began (on Ash Wednesday).
All you really need is food, water, air, and shelter (in which I am including some rags as a sort of traveling shelter). Everything else is a luxury to some degree. However, providing those luxuries is a major source of human happiness (and has been since the first guy or gal figured out a way to provide the first four in a little less time than the day before). I would say that allowing people to choose which necessities and which luxuries are worth having is really the principle freedom of a liberal economy.
Slashdot Mirror
Good for you! One tip, if you buy a britta, and run some Nikoli through it I'll bet you couldn't tell the difference between that and Smirnoff.
That's my point, the study and a whole lot of life is all about perspective. My hypothetical young person percieves themselves as a person of modest means because they probably live in an area that places their income in the lower stratas of the people around them (someone making $40,000 in San Fran, NYC, DC etc isn't in the upper half of the income distribution) which is what they are comparing themselves. However, they are slowly accumulating assets (even if just in the 401(k) and the equity in their home (from principle payments). If they did no other saving, by the time retirment comes, they will be in the top 1% of the global wealthy (there are a whole lot of people out there who will never accumulate assets equal to what they would save in a month). I went and looked up the study and the minimum wealth to be in the top 1% was $500,000 (10% was $80,000).
I wasn't saying it was a problem, but to try to compare a random definition of rich (which typically means someone who has more than me) with paying their fair share of the tax burden isn't a problem esily solved. I am certainly not advocating going taxing unrealized capital gains. I was also pointing out that the tax code is pretty fair when comparing tax distributions with income distributions (ie the top y% earn X% of the national income and pay something very near X% of taxes).
I didn't want to make it a long post with all the math, but was essentially assuming you were doing 3-5% above inflation with that return. Which still left you at roughly the same standard that would get you into the top 1%. You also will spend the other 95% of your income on at least a few non-temporary assets which would mean clearing a half million mark (in real dollars) pretty easily.
Of course rolled up in that are tons of assumptions, which either of us could think of in a few minutes, but the key point that I wanted to indirectly make (that isn't very clear) is that a young person's largest asset isn't monetary it's their future earnings (which should represent real as well as nominal) increases in wealth.
There is a whole profession dedicated to the study of just the questions you were asking, actuarial science. I've only just scratched the surface of what an actuary could do to answer your questions, but you probably won't be getting a full report from them.
It depends on what you mean by rich. To some people rich means "earns a high income." In the US, share of income is pretty closely correllated with share of income taxes paid (this is all personal taxes corporate taxes are a whole other subject). To others rich means has a large amount of resources available. Share of wealth is far lower correllated with share of taxes paid (because if you don't earn cash from an asset the IRS ignores it (with the exception of a few types of bonds in both directions). Take Bill Gates as an example (for this please don't consider his foundation). Bill owns 957 million shares of Microsoft but hasn't paid himself a salary. The IRS doesn't tax assets though. So his tax bill would only be due on the $354 million in dividends he was paid this year (at that level his income would be harder to shelter so he probably paid something near $140 million in taxes). So we have a guy who's wealth is 1 (in the US), income is probably in the top 100, and tax bill was also in the top 100 (I'd be shocked if his rank in income and taxes paid were more than 3-4 places apart, but both are probably 10s of places from his rank in wealth. Buffett is even further diverged (because his company doesn't pay dividends and his salary is pretty modest $100,000. He mentioned his tax rate once (in an example using his secretary) so he probably is still paying about $25,000 in taxes.
You could easily make the same statement about Goldman-Sachs which after it went public a few years ago there were lots of people with "fuck you money" as they would put it. Plenty of folks did leave (a more than decent number of hedge fund managers have the firm on their resume), but it doesn't really seem to slow their ability to continue to attract (and retain) top talent.
The top 1% only required wealth of $500,000 which a USer making $40,000 annually should easily eclipse with a 5% 401(k) contribution (assuming you have an employer match) and an 8% return. I'd guess that almost all of the college graduates here are above the 10% level (don't forget the value of cars, computers, clothes, any retirement accounts and such).
If it's wealth it would greatly depend on how wealthy I was, to stop a 10% chance I wouldn't probably pay more than $500,000 (perhaps that number would increase if I were wealthier) but I can think of a whole lot of things I'd rather have with the money than that little bit of piece of mind.
That's how I was thinking about it, I can't say for my child, but if I were the child I would not want 10% of my future resources to be spent on that cure, I'd rather take the odds (and enjoy the extra income over a potentially shortened life). I interpreted the original question as lifetime earnings, if it's current wealth (accumulated assets to date) I'd happily pay for the cure as 10% of my current accumulated assets are a far smaller number than 10% of my total earnings.
The Economist isn't a magazine for economists (they have their own journals), the term economist was originally one that is more like statesman or diplomat today. It's a right leaning (in European terms) newspaper with a minor focus on business (the major focus is on global relations). It tends to write about areas roughly in proportion to their global output and most articles that I know something about the subject tend to be more exhaustive than other newspaper articles.
I wouldn't spend 10% of my income for the treatment.
Middle class in North Korea means you had enough rice to cut the hunger pangs enough to fall asleep tonight. This was a country that stripped all the bark off it's trees in an attempt to find enough calories to survive!
Even the bad parts of Flint are pretty well lit. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/usanight_dm sp_big.gif
Yeah it makes the nicest stir fry.
Or perhaps they wanted other potential dissenters to know that our spies have a longer reach than you might guess, and no one will stop us after the next headline from Brittany/the Royals/Idol/Big Brother shows up.
The government operates currency functions very conservativly because they do not want to take any risks that could reduce the percieved legitimacy of the dollar as the world's primary reserve currency (one of the major reasons for that is the nation's financial stabilty). Changes to the currency while very minor risk reducing that percieved stability.
My NES has been working well since 1988 or so. I lived in the desert so corrosion was less of an issue with the pins.
Anti-aircraft carrier missiles? You do realize that essentially all of our navy is designed around the principle of protecting a carrier from harm, they generally travel in groups or task forces with an AGEIS cruiser (to spot those missiles), an attack sub or two (to hit any submarines that are operating in the area--undersea missiles), several crusiers and destroyers to further attack defend against air and submarines, typically a crusier that launches cruise missles (anti-surface ships), and a bevy of planes to sink/bomb whatever it was that you were planning to launch the missle from. Occasionally they toss a battle ship on there for land bombardment. That's sorta the point of being an aircraft carrier (the planes do the fighting--if the battle even gets to the carrier you've probably failed your mission). 60 years of history has said that carrier battle groups are the best thing going in navel warfare.
That's a factor (mostly on the cost), it also includesthe infastructure (such as Carriers, cargo planes, and logistical ships) that would allow a force to operate in hostile territory for a long period without dying (even if it's expensive). The ability to support your troops over distance is a huge factor in force projection. I think of it as arrows of various shapes and sizes, the width of the arrow is military strength, the length of the arrow is how far you can support them, most country's arrows narrow at the end, it's all a matter of how quickly. If you play Civ, think about how much harder it is to go to war on another island vs on the same island as your capital. Sure you may have knights and immortals vs their spearmen but if you only have two galleys then you probably won't be winning the interisland war.
A quick real world example is Taiwan, it's perhaps 90 miles off the coast of PRC and 4500 from the US (2500 from Hawaii), but the US Navy would make short work of a PRC amphibious assult, that's because we have far more force projection than they have, currently.
China includes folks who have more in common with our TSA and border patrol as part of that 3.5 million "regular" military. The key factor that folks are hinting at is what planners call force projection or the ability to support troops halfway around the world which is where our military is probably 10x anyone else's.
Well it probably gets overused as a marketing gimmick today, but I'd say the origins of Fat Tuesday justify it having a marketing use. It's been a party before you had to fast for 40 days for well over 500 years (and what is a party but a big marketing exercise in more ways than one). I'd be shocked given several theme's in the store (like the mermaid on the cup, if the Starbuck name isn't from the first mate of the Pequod, remember that before it was a national chain Starbuck's was a coffeeshop in Pike's Market. Now it's been a few years since I read the book, and I don't recall much relation to coffee, but he sure fits many of the mores and attitudes of most of the folks I've known from the Northwest. Is it tremendously overexposed now? Sure, but what skin is it off your nose if you don't buy their overpriced crap?
Humanity has always observed certain days as festival days and we generally like to do things in groups so if knowing that a few other folks are knocking out a few purchases this morning gives you a little buzz of happiness why knock it even if another group is earning something off the transaction?
You might enjoy the book "Stumbling upon Happiness" in which a professor examines what really makes us happy (generally simple little pleasures that we quickly forget) vs the big thing that we hold in high expectation (and while they can be very pleasurable they are also highly volatile in their result leading to far less total happiness than our effort applied).
You can't take your resources with you so you might as well smell the roses and find those things that make you happy (I'm not saying it has to be coffee or ice cream or even relishing the smug superiority above all peons scurrying about their day) but you probably aren't going to win many friends trying to convince not to do something that provides theirs.
Personally, I'll take a discount on a gift or purchase that I was highly likely to make in the next few weeks anyway or perhaps it meant that I could now afford something that they wanted more than my original gift just because some marketing firm decided to call today "cyber-Monday" as opposed to Monday the 27th. If that's the net result of a retarded and pointless day, than so be it, I'll let you know what they thought of their gifts next year.
Just looking at oil (not dry goods like most metals, grains, and coal), there are about 600 big tanker ships that essentially sail about 330-350 days a year (depending on how long their voyage is and how long it takes to fill and empty them). Each ship burns about a ton of oil per sailing day, so if this reduced usage by the 30%-40% it would greatly reduce pollution in the Oceans (and about 100 gallons per day per ship). Not bad for something as simple as blowing a few bubbles outside the ship's hull.
Successful organizations arise anew from the ashes of their destruction (and you thought the Phoenix was just a cool story to scare children). Paragraph 2 and 3 in the middle life section of the Nintendo article covers the rise, dilution, decline, and fall of Nintendo (which had diversified into taxi's, love hotels, network TV, food, and other products) resulting in near bankruptcy before they hired Miyamoto and completely changed the company's focus.
Fat Tuesday has some significance as it was the last day you could eat meat (pretty much the main source of fat calories in a European diet) before Lent began (on Ash Wednesday).
All you really need is food, water, air, and shelter (in which I am including some rags as a sort of traveling shelter). Everything else is a luxury to some degree. However, providing those luxuries is a major source of human happiness (and has been since the first guy or gal figured out a way to provide the first four in a little less time than the day before). I would say that allowing people to choose which necessities and which luxuries are worth having is really the principle freedom of a liberal economy.