nobodyknows
Diamond Member
- Sep 28, 2008
- 5,474
- 0
- 0
Zebo
Elite Member
- Jul 29, 2001
- 39,398
- 19
- 81
Corporate America and banking specifically is not about skill or hard work. It's about control and market position. Everyone should know this. You try and get a loan for 0% and let me know if they stop laughing before their body guards throw you out. And so far as members that comprise them while there are certainly examples of rags to riches, for the most part, our captains of banking started out a lot further ahead of the game going to schools like Andover and Wharton. Hardly a meritocracy.
Yes, because INVESTORS in a bank deserve to get 0% return for their money. Why don't you start giving a lot of the people you know 0% loans instead of investing it into the stock market, or other appreciating assets.
You're fucking cracked.
And how exactly do the companies who build cars, guns, houses, bridges...etc. get money? How do they allocate the resources? How do they create contracts and keep contractors to them?
You're telling me that *ALL* businesses should be 100% equity financed and that equity should be self-raised with only local investors.
The disaggregation of the economy would destroy the country, reverting it back to the 18th century. Companies would become very small and, largely, poorly run. We would not be able to compete on an international scale, since economies of scale and scope would be ruined.
This is why this study is utterly ridiculous, it takes into account 2-3 agenda driven viewpoints, pushes those, and ignores pretty much every other rational idea of a modern economy.
I think Zebo was referring to big Wall Street financial companies being lent many billions at zero interest by the Fed, and making some very large profits from that money.
It's one thing to defend the more legitimate role of Wall Street finance in the modern economy.
It's quite another not to acknowledge the main other more recent activities that have grown a lot, that are largely drains on the economy, many described as nothing more than making bets for profit.
While you defend Wall Street from the angry mob, you acknowledge massive parasitical drains too right?
There's some truth to that, and that's a reminder that the world's poor are an issue, too.
With the end of slavery, the end of colonization, the increasing efficiency of international transportation, the world is equalizing. The question is, are we working to bring others up, or are we moving lower?
For a while, there's been a big transfer going on of our money to others. Our debt is a big bill showing where things are going. Our wealthy class has been getting a lot richer, but only they are.
How have they grown? They provided financing and financial intermediation to those who asked for financing. That role is legitimate and needed.
You're telling me that the people who bought the houses with Option Arms, which have a very valid use, weren't being parasitic themselves? Or how about the realtors or mortgage brokers? They weren't being parasitic also, according to your definition?
Should we now get rid of, or deride, entire populations of professions merely because they fall victim to natural human irrational exuberance during boom times?
Ohh, I forgot, only bankers are to blame for *ALL* of humanity's temporary insanity.
Get a fucking grip you populist toolbag.
Don't tell me you are one of the right-wing neanderthals who think that every elected officisal has a secret vault in their office filled with taxpayer money where they sit and throw the money in the air like McScrooge?
The government isn't about 'getting and holding money'. It's about setting policy, including monetary policy, and they serve someone - typically a combination of the people who did the most to get them into power, and the people they think they need to win the next election, and some partial attempt to follow what they think the public good or their ideology is. If they're a populist who want to serve the masses (Bernie Sanders), they do that. If they're a corporate whore (too many to pick from), they do that.
You are not getting a very, very simple point. There are degrees of concentration of wealth and power in the country. Sometimes higher, sometimes lower. Sometimes we're at robber baron/gilded age levels, other times we're at less concentrated points like in the New Deal era. Sometimes unions have been illegal, sometimes they have been legal. Note that none of those involve elected officials holding the nation's wealth in their secret backroom vaults and swimming in it. It *does* involve how the masses are doing, the power they have to get a better wage.
In 1900, the average wage was (adjusted for inflation) $10,000; for decades it's been four times that.
Since Reagan, the bottom 80% have not made anything after inflation (the lower part makeless); the top 0.01% in the same period have increased their income many hundreds of percent.
These are the issues, and others, but it has nothing to do with the government hoarding tax money.
The government DOES tax more and less, spend more and less, but that's not hoarding money, it's helping certain interests at the expense of others. When it changes taxes so the rich pay less and everyone else pays more, that's a policy decision that affects people.So would be the opposite. You should be discussing the actual issues of who the government is serving, not ideololigcally ranting against the goverment.
The government for some time has been primarily serving the most wealthy, the corporatocracy, at the expense of the public, in non-sustainable ways - but it's relative. The government is still doing all kinds of things that help the public as well, we're not a bana republic with millions starving and without any place to sleep but shanties. But there are bad trends in wealth distribution. They don't involve the government hoarding tax money, they involve the rich getting richer, record levels concentration of wealth. as the rich get more and the rest are at record levels of debt public and private.
Maybe you can't read, and maybe you're not honest, but those are your only choices, because you are putting words in my mouth that are the opposite of what I have always said.
Get it through your thick substances near your ears, that I do not and never have supported 'equal wages' or 'equal results' or 'equal wealth'. Opposing EXCESSIVE concentration of wealth is not EQUAL WEALTH.
I have always said there is a middle range that's optimal for incenting productivity and fairness. Too much and too little inequality are both bad (although only one is an actual threat to happen).
Yes, in times of excessive inequality, paying the low-paid more is the thing to do. How much they're paid is much influenced by the distribution of power and wealth, as I said.
The more concentrated things are, the less competitive pressure there is pushing for better pay for the workers.
The more concentrated things are, the more the few are likely to be the ones government is serving, and giving them policies that let them pay less, instead of representing the workers.
I thought you were better than that post. Try to show me I wasn't wrong next post.
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sao123
Lifer
- May 27, 2002
- 12,653
- 205
- 106
I also believe that in the trench, front line workers, of all types are far more important than upper CEO's and Exec's.
No, you are putting words in my mouth I never said. Your dishonesty, your hostility, your profane name-calling, are quite misdirected and you need to get a grip on *yourself*, 'toolbag'.
And more gargabe I never said. You appear to havbe lost your mind in defensiveness against the things you are 'quoting' that I never said.
But if you want to play on a message forum, you need to not run around recklessly attacking people and falsely attributiing statements to them.
I have always been careful, including in recent posts today, to distinguish the good and bad Wall Street does. The majority of people in the banking industry are doing productive things.
In fact, I was just making that point defending the legiitmate part of Wall Street tonight to someone who was painting with too broad a brush.
But the fact is that Wall Street has been doing a lot of new things that are not productive, that are parasitic, that are 'gambling', in recent years - and recently often with tax money, bailouit or 0% loans.
You have in the past had some ability to recognize flaws with Wall Street bad behavior, so I posted to you civilly with the expectation for you to be honest.
You respond with this dishonest, selective, attacking garbage.
You want to deal with reality and be rational, or you want to be and be shown to be the fool you are choosing to be? Your choice.
You need to take a deep breath and stop the idiotic and dishonest attacks you have succumbed to, and pick your targets as those who are actually saying what you are upset with in your recent paranoia.
Janitors and blue collar work will eventually be replaced by robots. At that point there would be no need for janitors. Their worthiness in the society will just continue to decline.
Technicians who fix the robots on the other hand....
Maybe eventually they'll build robots to fix other robots.
Think Wall-E (if you haven't seen it already). Barring any major international wars, that's where we're headed.
Technicians who fix the robots on the other hand....
Maybe eventually they'll build robots to fix other robots.
Think Wall-E (if you haven't seen it already). Barring any major international wars, that's where we're headed.
Oh, and there are good bankers out there who aren't as greedy. They have to assess risk when loaning money to people (for investments and what not). I guess you could replace bankers too with computers at some point. If you have a FICO score of this and this much asset, you get a loan. Grossly simplified but maybe humans really shouldn't be trusted with power.
CPA
Elite Member
- Nov 19, 2001
- 30,322
- 4
- 0
"Representing workers" This is why you and I will never see eye to eye.
But, tell me oh wise one, what is this level of excessive wealth?
If there is a middle range, then you surely do accept the notion of fair distribution of wealth no matter what the means to that distribution is. And that generally comes from equalizing pay or contrasting taxes. However, I think we all know that you want both. I don't believe for a minute that you and your ilk would be content to do anything less. Take an inch, next a foot, finally a mile.
Sometime I wonder what Craig does in real life.
It seems like a overwhelming majority of my friends who are liberals had sh!tty majors and aren't really contributing too much to improve our society. They obviously want to redistribute wealth created by other people because they're liberals and they want to spend other people's money.
Yes, this is why no one is attacking the entire bankng industry.
But there are some who defend by conflating. So if a police officer is attacked for blowing the head off of a suspect wrongly, there are some who defend him with "you ingrate the poiice protect you".
If a soldier kills someone they shouldn't, there are those who say "you ingrate, the military protects you".
If a politician does wrong, there are some in his party who will say "you partisan SOB, our party has done this good thing and that good thing."
And in this case, when someone attacks the bad practices of Wall Street that have been so harmful, there are those who defend it with 'you ******* toolbox the banking industry does good for the nation.'
CADsortaGUY
Lifer
Duh CPA - this isn't about an actual "equality" - it's about Craig234 deciding who gets to have more and how much they can have. You see, the socialists are starting to crack and show their real colors and it's never actually been about "the collective" - it's about how/who controls "the collective".
Modelworks
Lifer
- Feb 22, 2007
- 16,240
- 7
- 76
I agree. Another segment that is very underpaid is people that take care of the elderly. People that work in places like nursing homes get paid maybe 50 cents over minimum wage if they are lucky. What does the job entail ? Lifting people in and out of bed, cleaning them up if they don't make it to the bathroom, washing clothes, feeding them , helping them get dressed , and more. They work a lot harder in a day than anyone in a desk job.
Not much of an apology for your bad behavior in misrepresenting what I said. Disappointing.
If 'representing workers' is a bad thing to you, then yes, we disagree. I'm for fairness, for the well-being of as many as possible. That includes not simplly giving everyone the same amount, an issue I came to conclusions on decades ago, where you cripple productivity and therefore wealth and have a small pie - a point which conservatives often like to make as if it's the entire economic policy you need, l;ke to assume liberals don't understand, when it's they who don't understand the other issues.
Like any subjective issue, there's no hard number, but there are ranges in which it's pretty clear to say 'too little' and 'too much' and there's a middle range that's good.
You need to use a little common sense. But since the issue is complex, there are numeric aids, like the popular index of inequality in which you can pick a middle range. We're far above the middle now.
And trends are in the wrong direction.
To put it simply (and repeat), too little means that there are inadequate rewards and incentives for productivity, and productivity suffers, the 'everyone equally poor' problem. This doesn't really happen in the real world today much that I see. Too much might be a South American country where 1% own 99% of the land, most of it unused, with the masses fighting for slave positions to work the land for the profit of the 1%, the rest of them starving and sick in the streets (to paint a picture of the idea, not to say it's an accurate depiction of a particular country). In such a country, the wealthy are happy to have a smaller pie in order to keep themselves owning nearly all of the pie. Thisa is the trend whenever a small wealthy group gets too much and 'kills the golden goose' of productivity by not allowing enough wealth to be shared to fuel the economic sysem of incentives and rewards. This can result in their haing less actual wealth, while owning more of the total wealth.
Wall Street is now doing all kinds of things with hugs sums of money that are parasitic, not the service to help the economy they're supposed to do.
I know some right-wing ideologues want to scream "supposed to do! Who are you to say what people do with their money you liveral!" But I'm of the view that society can protect itself from such threats.
The "public interest" trumps that ideology for me. I"m all about a lot of freedom for private things, for people to do what they want, but there are limits when the nation is blackmailed and cripppled from abuse.
I have no problem with financial regulators doing their job and identifying limits for behaviors that the net effect of is to do nothing but enrich someone for nothing useful that costs the nation - like the exploitave market practices that preceded the Great Depression, when the wealthy had schemes to mil the nation and get rich, leading to the crash.
Wrong, and you are attempting to create a straw man.
If I'm for murderers being caught, do you think you can add the phrase "no matter what the means" to my position and attack the resulting bad things, as if I said torturing suspects' family members is ok?
Instead of listening and being honest that you were wrong the first time you tried to put this 'equal wealth' position in my mouth, you are still trying to do it, just rephrasing the claim. It's still wrong.
Funny, you are moving from 'mistake' to intentional liar. We're on whatk round three of you trying to say what my positin is and my correcting you and you are still lying?
You are clearly an ideologue blinded so that you simply cannot understand that my position is not what your ideology says.
You have this simplistic notion that your opponents are for equal wealth, and you rely on that instead of listening to the actual arguments, to keep felling you are correct.
And so you so rabidly and persistently keep repeating how I'm for equal wealth, because you can't stand to give up the easy but false ideololgy and deal with the arguments.
"We all know" is an especially weak crutch to cover your dishonesty - you can't back it up, so you wrongly claim it's somethign there's consensus on, to try to grasp for the credibility you lack.
The standard response is 'you can barely speak for yourself, don't try to spea for others'. But simply pointing out you can't make your own lie credible with the pathetic phrase is enough.
Would you like to try again to tell me what my position is despite what I say and get corrected agains for round 4, or would you like to try being honest and having to actuallly discuss the issues?
If 'representing workers' is a bad thing to you, then yes, we disagree. I'm for fairness, for the well-being of as many as possible. That includes not simplly giving everyone the same amount, an issue I came to conclusions on decades ago, where you cripple productivity and therefore wealth and have a small pie - a point which conservatives often like to make as if it's the entire economic policy you need, l;ke to assume liberals don't understand, when it's they who don't understand the other issues.
Like any subjective issue, there's no hard number, but there are ranges in which it's pretty clear to say 'too little' and 'too much' and there's a middle range that's good.
You need to use a little common sense. But since the issue is complex, there are numeric aids, like the popular index of inequality in which you can pick a middle range. We're far above the middle now.
And trends are in the wrong direction.
To put it simply (and repeat), too little means that there are inadequate rewards and incentives for productivity, and productivity suffers, the 'everyone equally poor' problem. This doesn't really happen in the real world today much that I see. Too much might be a South American country where 1% own 99% of the land, most of it unused, with the masses fighting for slave positions to work the land for the profit of the 1%, the rest of them starving and sick in the streets (to paint a picture of the idea, not to say it's an accurate depiction of a particular country). In such a country, the wealthy are happy to have a smaller pie in order to keep themselves owning nearly all of the pie. Thisa is the trend whenever a small wealthy group gets too much and 'kills the golden goose' of productivity by not allowing enough wealth to be shared to fuel the economic sysem of incentives and rewards. This can result in their haing less actual wealth, while owning more of the total wealth.
Wall Street is now doing all kinds of things with hugs sums of money that are parasitic, not the service to help the economy they're supposed to do.
I know some right-wing ideologues want to scream "supposed to do! Who are you to say what people do with their money you liveral!" But I'm of the view that society can protect itself from such threats.
The "public interest" trumps that ideology for me. I"m all about a lot of freedom for private things, for people to do what they want, but there are limits when the nation is blackmailed and cripppled from abuse.
I have no problem with financial regulators doing their job and identifying limits for behaviors that the net effect of is to do nothing but enrich someone for nothing useful that costs the nation - like the exploitave market practices that preceded the Great Depression, when the wealthy had schemes to mil the nation and get rich, leading to the crash.
Wrong, and you are attempting to create a straw man.
If I'm for murderers being caught, do you think you can add the phrase "no matter what the means" to my position and attack the resulting bad things, as if I said torturing suspects' family members is ok?
Instead of listening and being honest that you were wrong the first time you tried to put this 'equal wealth' position in my mouth, you are still trying to do it, just rephrasing the claim. It's still wrong.
Funny, you are moving from 'mistake' to intentional liar. We're on whatk round three of you trying to say what my positin is and my correcting you and you are still lying?
You are clearly an ideologue blinded so that you simply cannot understand that my position is not what your ideology says.
You have this simplistic notion that your opponents are for equal wealth, and you rely on that instead of listening to the actual arguments, to keep felling you are correct.
And so you so rabidly and persistently keep repeating how I'm for equal wealth, because you can't stand to give up the easy but false ideololgy and deal with the arguments.
"We all know" is an especially weak crutch to cover your dishonesty - you can't back it up, so you wrongly claim it's somethign there's consensus on, to try to grasp for the credibility you lack.
The standard response is 'you can barely speak for yourself, don't try to spea for others'. But simply pointing out you can't make your own lie credible with the pathetic phrase is enough.
Would you like to try again to tell me what my position is despite what I say and get corrected agains for round 4, or would you like to try being honest and having to actuallly discuss the issues?
IndyColtsFan
Lifer
- Sep 22, 2007
- 33,655
- 687
- 126
It's nice you are curious. I have had a policy for many years not to discuss RL much, not to be secreitive, but for the purpose to keep the discussion about the argument, not the arguer.
It's all too easy for a discussion to leave the merit of the argument and become 'well, I blah blah and you blah blah so I'm right'. It's a corrupting element.
I've shared relevant personal info on occassion, trying to share things but not too much to cause that sort of personaliszation of the topics.
I've made the point before - if a former Secretary of State came here and made an argument on a foreign policy topic, it wouldn't stop people from tellling them they're wrong - so what's the point in any lesser discussion of that sort of thing? There are times it's useful, when you are making a point that relies on your personal situation, like John of Sheffield discussing the war in Afghanistan, but other times it's not helpful.
I agree.
The 'free market' has all kinds of bias in it, not visible to those who aren't looking.
It's 'a' way to determine salaries - and has plenty of unfairness.
People who argue for the 'free market' system and against this don't have a point - they don't care about fairness, are happy with the people who clean their toilets and their parents costing as littls as possible.
It's a sort of view based on not treating those workers as equal people to care about, dehumanizing.
It's ther same type of invisibility as on other historic issues of social justice. Blacks were often 'invisible' when discriminatred against, you didn't need to pay any attention to it, you just preserved your own advantage. Women were often invisible on things like the right to vote, not an issue until they made it one, and had the lucky access as family members to push their 'agenda'. Poverty around the world, invisible as our media rarely covers it, pandering with nonsense in our nation. The handicapped were long invisible until someone pushed parking and access laws. And so on. It's a cop ouit to pretend the 'free market' addresses justice.
The "redistribute wealth" analogy really gets overused on this forum. For one, I don't think most of the people who use it even know what it means. All government is a form of redistribution, it's deciding who gets what and how much. We should also make a prize for the largest over-generalization of the day...
Out of curiosity, what major's are you referring to? Frankly my experience is that, no matter what major you select, everyone is required to take a very similar core curriculum. It's also hard to measure a majors "worth" to society, since many contributions (especially in the arts) have no initial monetary value.
My feeling on free markets? Well, I know that since I had cancer my intrinsic monetary value to society probably will be negative. Free market health insurance would have killed me off to save a buck if it could have. Free markets do essentially nothing to reward altruistic individuals, instead creating a system where competition and backstabbing reign. I've worked in enough private companies to see that every single day. For those who believe that full free markets would end all our woes, I just chuckle. Mega-corporations and conglomerates are just another name for the same evil, and better the devil I know than the devil I don't.
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IndyColtsFan
Lifer
- Sep 22, 2007
- 33,655
- 687
- 126
Maybe I am misunderstanding your statement, but saying that the core curriculum of an engineering major, for example, is similar to the core curriculum of a philosophy major, for example, is a bit of a stretch.
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