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12-23-2011, 04:18 PM
Not according to the actual figures:
"The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more, not including first homes, fell by 2.5 million to 6.7 million in 2008, according to the Spectrum Group report, as reported by Reuters.
After the 27 percent drop, the number of millionaires is at the lowest level since 2003, when the millionaire population stood at 6.2 million..........The number of U.S. households with a net worth over $5 million, again not including first homes, fell by 28 percent to 840,000."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire
Just because you want to believe that the rich are getting richer...etc....doesn't make it so. Clearly, there are fewer rich people (with a net worth of 1 mil not counting primary residence) than there were before the recession.
Some of the measurements you propose above are just plain nutty. Percentages of stock? Really? Look up "changes in political contributions"; I won't even do that for you, and you'll find that the wealthy people these days are giving less, not more.
You can't just make crap up and dish it out, Wei.
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12-23-2011, 04:20 PM
While you were hanging yourself , on someone else's words
Dying to believe in what you heard
I was staring straight into the shining sun
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12-23-2011, 06:28 PM
I never claimed that more people are getting richer. My essential claim is that the more wealthy you are, the more you have benefited from the economic climate for the last few decades, especially this last decade.
Some of the measurements you propose above are just plain nutty. Percentages of stock? Really? Look up "changes in political contributions"; I won't even do that for you, and you'll find that the wealthy people these days are giving less, not more.
You can't just make crap up and dish it out, Wei.
Political contributions don't come in just the direct form anymore, as individual campaign contributions. We have new entities like PACs and SuperPACs that allow enormous sums of money to fly under the radar.Originally Posted by Adam Smith - Wealth of Nations
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12-23-2011, 06:30 PM
It's true though, and the entire right-wing economic rhetoric is based on the myth that a pure economy absent of government intervention is the solution and the goal. It's simply impossible.
Not only is it impossible on it's face, but if we look at the current economic situation, we are so dramatically far in the opposite direction that even coming close to that goal is practically impossible.Originally Posted by Adam Smith - Wealth of Nations
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12-23-2011, 06:43 PM
Fair enough, perhaps my example was too simple.
Still, we can look at this anyway. Do you really believe these sales are done without human fault? You don't know knowing someone in the right position or having worked in the industry before or other factors contribute to contract decisions?
What about other aspects of the government, like where congress gets their office supplies? Say someone who worked for an office supplier then landed a position where they could influence the decision, and they happen to have good relationships with their former colleagues and cut them a deal? This type of stuff happens all the time and it flies under the radar because it's not "major corruption".
Let's look at taxes too, those affect the economy as well. A sales tax would affect retailers differently than it would affect say a publishing company.
When a policy is put in place that favors a sales tax, that's going to affect some businesses more than others.
Tariffs would affect businesses that sell important goods more than it would businesses that sell domestic goods.
There are many examples where policy affects the marketplace, every government policy is going to have direct or indirect effects on the economy.
Like all socialists, you presume that because I want less government, I want no government, or that because I oppose an action at the federal level, I must therefore oppose it being done at all. That is the classic leftist straw man argument against smaller government, and it doesn't hold up.
Pot calling kettle black.
No, my "solution" is that government be scaled back so that its power to impact the economy is minimized.
The Constitution placed specific limits on the powers of the federal government. When the federal government exceeds those limits, it encroaches on the rights of the states and the people, respectively, and destroys economic liberty (which is the foundation for all other liberties). Government is supposed to be our servant, not our master, but a bloated permanent government run by a spoiled, irresponsible governing class is not going to serve anyone but itself.
Forcing the government back to its Constitutional limits would force it out of the various economic spheres that it now intrudes upon, and would reduce its influence to manageable levels. There is nothing in the Constitution that should allow the federal government to transfer tax revenues to investment bankers or auto companies, or to dictate employment terms, insurance policies or agricultural output to the whole nation. The Interstate Commerce Clause was never meant to be a catchall that would allow the federal government to regulate the wheat that a farmer grows to feed himself and his family and livestock, it was meant to prevent the states from setting up internal trade barriers.Originally Posted by Adam Smith - Wealth of Nations
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12-23-2011, 08:04 PM
I would hope that no serious person would propose such an arrangement. In any case I am a right-winger (I suppose) and I do not favor it.
I now charge you with Bobbing & Weaving! The rich obviously have not benefited from recent economic climate because there are demonstrably fewer of them.
It's probably poor form to single out one person, but I will point out that Bill Gates' fortunes in the years '08, '09, '10 and '11 are; 57 billion, 40 billion, 54 billion and 56 billion. In other words he has not even kept up with inflation. He is still down a billion from '08, and has never matched the 59 billion he had in '07. For that matter, I have outperformed Gates although I doubt that I will ever be able to pass him.:) One can hope.
I encourage you to look at the figures and quit beating that same old drum of the rich are getting richer, and we gotta stop them. It's not true.
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12-26-2011, 01:33 PM
No, it's typical of leftists. You point to the one area where the government does function efficiently and pretend that the rest of the government can do the same thing, or that it is a model for economic intervention in other areas.
In other words, do I believe that life is perfect? Obviously not. Any business transaction can be manipulated by political or personal considerations. However, if you permit that long enough, the businesses involved end up collapsing as their competitors beat them by being more efficient. In the case of military expenditures, the competition isn't just between companies, but between nations, and the end result of cronyism and nepotism shows up on the battlefield.
You are demonstrating your ignorance again. Purchases of things like office supplies are done from an approved catalog, which includes most major manufacturers, all of whom meet government specs for the required product. Things that are not in the catalog may be directly purchased if they are below a certain dollar amount, but must be bid in if they exceed it. True, there are some companies that are better situated to take advantage of these policies, but, as I tell my daughters, life isn't fair. Deal with it. The place where you do get corruption is not in the contracting of goods at the micro level, but in the awarding of large contracts for things like construction projects, or through the manipulation of rules to exclude non-union labor, which directly benefits union bosses who then have money to contribute to campaigns, so that they can perpetuate the process.
Yes, and one of the major complaints about tax policy is that the code is written to reward the politically connected and punish those who are on the outs. And, the more that the government spends, the more that it needs to take out of the economy, which expands its reach into more and more areas where it gets to pick winners and losers. Complex tax rules also benefit established companies, which have whole divisions set up for compliance, but which raise the bar to entry into markets by imposing additional costs on newcomers.
Exactly. Which is why you want to reduce government policies to the minimum possible, while still giving it the power to accomplish its Constitutionally limited functions.
No, I accuse you of supporting Stalinist gulags because you call yourself a Marxist and communist. Universal health care is simply a symptom of Marxist/communist thought (or what passes for it).
I don't believe that capitalism will solve all problems, but it solves the critical problem of meeting demand and creating supply, which solves most other problems. It is the best system among all of the choices available or possible. And no, I haven't read any Ayn Rand lately. But I am reading some Thomas Sowell. You should read his book on intellectuals. It will explain a lot to you.--Odysseus
Sic Hacer Pace, Para Bellum.
Before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the people!
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