How The Rich Are Winning

[BlahBlahYouToo]

The crowd who thinks everyone can be rich is completely out of touch with the reality of economics. It's literally impossible for everybody to be rich, or even middle class. Stratification is an inevitable part of a capitalist economy. The only thing that makes you rich, middle, or poor is your wealth relative to everyone else's. Note how the rich cry when we raise minimum wage to help the working poor.

The issue here is that the ones at the very very top are getting richer and richer, for some structural reasons, at the expense of everyone below. Wealth is a finite resource.

too fucking bad?
i'm only middle class and i know that i will never become bill gates wealthy. i'm not complaining about bill and his $50B net worth and asking that it be distributed to me (though it would be nice if it was).

 

[child of wonder]

Wealth is a finite resource.

Not when we can magically create money out of thin air!

 

[Throckmorton]

we're not created equal. you work with what you were given and make the best of it.
a person's full potential might be upper middle class, and if he works towards it, it can be attained.
but he's not entitled to it. if he doesn't get his shit together, he'll be relegated to lower class poverty.
he has no one to blame but himself.

Even if everybody did everything right, a certan % of the population would be poor. Someone has to do things like pick crops for minimum wage.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Sure. But most are.

Yeah, sort of like how not all but most financially successful folks are assholes.

 

[BoberFett]

Wealth is a finite resource.

You haven't got a clue, do you?

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Even if everybody did everything right, a certan % of the population would be poor. Someone has to do things like pick crops for minimum wage.

yup, too bad. nobody said life was fair. you're not entitled to anything just because you were born.

or do you believe that everyone should have a set standard of living no matter how deserved or undeserved?

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Here we go, back to the crux of the right-wing argument. That financial success should be the only thing keeping you from starving to death, dieing from lack of medical care, going homeless, etc. in modern society.

 

[sandorski]

Here we go, back to the crux of the right-wing argument. That financial success should be the only thing keeping you from starving to death, dieing from lack of medical care, going homeless, etc. in modern society.

"Life's not fair!"....until someone suggests the
wealthiest Pay at a higher Tax Rate or, OMGWTF, an Inheritance Tax!!

 

[IGBT]

you keep your earned income and I'll keep mine.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Here we go, back to the crux of the right-wing argument. That financial success should be the only thing keeping you from starving to death, dieing from lack of medical care, going homeless, etc. in modern society.

dying is spelled dYing, not dIEing.
you're welcome.

 

[StageLeft]

For my money nothing is better than Westerners talking with aplomb about how they make their own luck, ambition is all you need, the world is your oyster, etc.

We're all as lucky as a fat pig to be here. Most of us would be drinking sh*t-tainted water if we happened to have been born in central Africa and don't you think otherwise.

--

Here are some adages for you:

It takes money to make money.
Money is power.

Even a child can be taught the simplicities of a basic monopoly and why laws have been constructed to counteract them. In a purely free market, one without sufficient rules, money (i.e. power) will be increasingly concentrated in the few.

Do you really think you're so special that without laws that are protecting you already you'd be one of the scant minority, rich and wealthy, and not one of the scrap-lapping chumps on the bottom?

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

dying is spelled dYing, not dIEing.
you're welcome.

Congrats, you do a better job than my spellchecker.

 

[Throckmorton]

You haven't got a clue, do you?

I don't think you have a clue. Everybody can't be rich, by definition. I assume you're thinking about creating wealth. Well that's well and good, the world as a whole is much wealthier than it was 1000 years ago. But at any given point in time, there is a finite amount of wealth in the world. If wealth weren't finite, it wouldn't have value, and wouldn't exist. By definition wealth has to be finite.

 

[IGBT]

and what arse out poor broke fusk ever offered you a job?? And if you do work where do you think your job came from?? Where do you think the vast majority of US jobs come from??

 

[Kanalua]

First generation lawyer here. Born to a unsuccessful businessman father and a housewife mother. Lost our family home to foreclosure. First college grad in our family, first and only with an advanced degree.

Luck didn't get me into College. Luck didn't take the LSAT for me. Luck didn't get me into Law School. Luck didn't pass the bar for me.

 

[Throckmorton]

and what arse out poor broke fusk ever offered you a job?? And if you do work where do you think your job came from?? Where do you think the vast majority of US jobs come from??

Jobs come from demand for work caused by demand for goods created by employers. Jobs DON'T come from some lord or lady in an ivory tower exercising charity.

You know most jobs in this country are at small businesses right? Small business owners aren't the ones in that top 1%.

 

[woolfe9999]

I don't think you have a clue. Everybody can't be rich, by definition. I assume you're thinking about creating wealth. Well that's well and good, the world as a whole is much wealthier than it was 1000 years ago. But at any given point in time, there is a finite amount of wealth in the world. If wealth weren't finite, it wouldn't have value, and wouldn't exist. By definition wealth has to be finite.

Yeah I kind of agree and kind of disagree with you. Economics is a system of distributing resources. Money is beside the point. It's just a convenience mechanism. Anyway, resources are of course finite. Now you're using the term "weath" and saying everyone can't be wealthy (rich was your word). That depends what you mean by wealthy or rich. By the standard of 1000 years ago, middle class people today would have been considered rich. And if that is true, perhaps 1000 years from now, middle class people would be considered rich by today's standard. The theory is that technology increases human productivity, which in turn increases the size of the "pie" such that eventually, everyone may have literally everything they may ever need or want. In that scenario, distribution of resources is irrelevant because the poorest person has no material wants or needs that are not fulfilled. Everyone is then "wealthy" if the definition of wealth is having no material wants or needs that are unfulfilled because of limited access to resources.

You're right about the hear and now, of course. Not everyone can have all their wants, or even their needs, met, even if everyone does everything right. That is a complete fallacy.

- wolf

 

[bamacre]

In a purely free market, one without sufficient rules, money (i.e. power) will be increasingly concentrated in the few.

It's happening now, has been happening, and we haven't seen anything even resembling "a purely free market" in a long, long, time.

 

[sandorski]

Yeah I kind of agree and kind of disagree with you. Economics is a system of distributing resources. Money is beside the point. It's just a convenience mechanism. Anyway, resources are of course finite. Now you're using the term "weath" and saying everyone can't be wealthy (rich was your word). That depends what you mean by wealthy or rich. By the standard of 1000 years ago, middle class people today would have been considered rich. And if that is true, perhaps 1000 years from now, middle class people would be considered rich by today's standard. The theory is that technology increases human productivity, which in turn increases the size of the "pie" such that eventually, everyone may have literally everything they may ever need or want. In that scenario, distribution of resources is irrelevant because the poorest person has no material wants or needs that are not fulfilled. Everyone is then "wealthy" if the definition of wealth is having no material wants or needs that are unfulfilled because of limited access to resources.

You're right about the hear and now, of course. Not everyone can have all their wants, or even their needs, met, even if everyone does everything right. That is a complete fallacy.

- wolf

Karl Marx suggested a similar idea. Except he was discussing what would end Capitalism. The basic premise, as I recall it, is that Production would eventually be beyond Demand and the system would collapse on itself. I think he over estimated the influence of Supply/Demand, when Supply exceeds Demand we get Recessions/Depressions, but eventually they re-balance and the Economy goes on.

That said, Production is finicky. So is Supply/Demand. He who has the Production, benefits from the Supply/Demand. Too many US Posters seem to think only the US is Capitalist/Free Market and talking of one is the same as talking of the Other. This is unfortunate as it's the furthest thing from Reality. The whole World is Capitalist/Free Market. Recovery of that System no longer means Recovery for the US. In fact, the US could gradually slip to decade ago China/India status and the Global Economy would chug along just fine as if nothing happened.

That is why I regularly suggest that the US Needs another PC or Internet if it wants to maintain its' Standard of Living. That or it definitely needs to abandon the International Free Trade it has been promoting for Decades now(something rendered almost impossible due to Foreign Debt).

 

[BoberFett]

I don't think you have a clue. Everybody can't be rich, by definition. I assume you're thinking about creating wealth. Well that's well and good, the world as a whole is much wealthier than it was 1000 years ago. But at any given point in time, there is a finite amount of wealth in the world. If wealth weren't finite, it wouldn't have value, and wouldn't exist. By definition wealth has to be finite.

Wealth is for all intents and purposes infinite. Wealth is the sum total of all human endeavors. It is created, usually by private enterprise and industrious individuals from assembly line workers to engineers. It can also be destroyed, usually by ill conceived or flat out corrupt government schemes like the Iraq war and Cash for Clunkers. Certainly, having wealth already makes it easier to create additional wealth. But anybody can create wealth if they choose to. A person can write a computer program, record a song, build a table, repair an old bicycle. Those all create wealth. If you get right down to it, wealth is an accumulation of time spent creating. In a sense you're correct that at a given point in time, wealth is finite. But in the time it took to type that sentence, more wealth was created. And more wealth was just created again. And again. And again. Wealth is expanding constantly. Let's just look at one portion of wealth, a current hot item, intellectual property. Do you believe that every song that can be sung has already been written? If not, when will the end of music occur? Surely if wealth is finite, then we must hit a brick wall at some point and no new music will be created.

The tragedy is that so many people believe in the broken window fallacy. Rather than use our time and effort to create more wealth, we choose to use government to purposely destroy wealth so then we can pay people to re-create that which we just destroyed. That is why wealth appears to be finite. Because right now we seem to be destroying it as fast as we can create it. To apply this to the previous intellectual property example, let's look at copyright. Government in it's wisdom has decided that copyright needs to be extended every time Disney is about to lose the copyright on Steamboat Willie. Hollywood has basements full of film rotting away, never to be seen again, while most of that old footage can't be seen due to copyright restrictions. We destroy old wealth in order to create new wealth. And who is the beneficiary of this new wealth? Not the public. Rich Hollywood executives and actors, with the crews who work on the film making a pittance. Thanks government, for destroying the public domain and transferring the wealth of the commons to a few hands.

More examples? War. We destroy nations just to rebuild them. Cash for Clunkers. We destroyed millions of cars, that was wealth which is now gone. And who benefits from these types of actions? Sure, the peons who do the actual work get a few crumbs, but it goes disproportionately to those already on top. We will not become more wealthy by taking from some and giving to others. We become more wealthy by creating more wealth in a way that doesn't destroy what we already have.

 

[Zebo]

There's no inequality. Everyone has the same opportunity here to become as rich as they want or make choices in life to be as poor as they want. Try being born in those other countries to poor parents - it's infinitely harder to "make it."

A dumb God believing right winger born from poor immigrants like me can make six figures by the age of 25, why can't anyone else? If I were born in JAP/AUS/EUR I'd probably be poor.

Cliffs: America is great because of the wide income distribution. It means the cap on earnings is higher.

Some truth to both sides. (sorry I'm not an idealoge)

Did you attended public schools and public universities who gave you opportunity to succeed?

Did you take advantage of anti-discrimination laws without which you'd be relegated to pounding rail road ties no matter how smart you are? As was the case for Chinese for half a century.

Did I get an SBA loan to start my first business, without which I'd get laughed out of bank because my name is not Bush who can fail 5x and still get millions from friends who own banks?

Did Americans of old get free land to make their farms and pass them generation to generation and eventually sell them for corporate office space in Costa Mesa?

This country has always been about making opportunity so your gifts shine and that costs money, tax payer money. It's only a question of whom you want to pay it and at what distribution.

 

[flexy]

A dumb God believing right winger born from poor immigrants like me can make six figures by the age of 25, why can't anyone else?

Nice. Waiting for the book. But i would scratch that part with "blaming" everyone who does NOT make six figures...it might put some people off and you might "slightly" come off as arrogant d****e

And...by the way while i am basically agreeing with you...i am also aware that the MAJORITY of people will not reach that goal, nevertheless.

 

[Throckmorton]

Wealth is for all intents and purposes infinite. Wealth is the sum total of all human endeavors. It is created, usually by private enterprise and industrious individuals from assembly line workers to engineers. It can also be destroyed, usually by ill conceived or flat out corrupt government schemes like the Iraq war and Cash for Clunkers. Certainly, having wealth already makes it easier to create additional wealth. But anybody can create wealth if they choose to. A person can write a computer program, record a song, build a table, repair an old bicycle. Those all create wealth. If you get right down to it, wealth is an accumulation of time spent creating. In a sense you're correct that at a given point in time, wealth is finite. But in the time it took to type that sentence, more wealth was created. And more wealth was just created again. And again. And again. Wealth is expanding constantly. Let's just look at one portion of wealth, a current hot item, intellectual property. Do you believe that every song that can be sung has already been written? If not, when will the end of music occur? Surely if wealth is finite, then we must hit a brick wall at some point and no new music will be created.

The tragedy is that so many people believe in the broken window fallacy. Rather than use our time and effort to create more wealth, we choose to use government to purposely destroy wealth so then we can pay people to re-create that which we just destroyed. That is why wealth appears to be finite. Because right now we seem to be destroying it as fast as we can create it. To apply this to the previous intellectual property example, let's look at copyright. Government in it's wisdom has decided that copyright needs to be extended every time Disney is about to lose the copyright on Steamboat Willie. Hollywood has basements full of film rotting away, never to be seen again, while most of that old footage can't be seen due to copyright restrictions. We destroy old wealth in order to create new wealth. And who is the beneficiary of this new wealth? Not the public. Rich Hollywood executives and actors, with the crews who work on the film making a pittance. Thanks government, for destroying the public domain and transferring the wealth of the commons to a few hands.

More examples? War. We destroy nations just to rebuild them. Cash for Clunkers. We destroyed millions of cars, that was wealth which is now gone. And who benefits from these types of actions? Sure, the peons who do the actual work get a few crumbs, but it goes disproportionately to those already on top. We will not become more wealthy by taking from some and giving to others. We become more wealthy by creating more wealth in a way that doesn't destroy what we already have.

The problem is that even with this ever increasing wealth, the poor even in this country are suffering. This isn't Star Trek where resources are effectively limitless. Knowing that stratification is inevitable unless we switch to communism, the only way for the poor to have a standard of living in line with our first world status is to pay them more for their labor

 

[Throckmorton]

Originally Posted by JS80 View Post
There's no inequality. Everyone has the same opportunity here to become as rich as they want or make choices in life to be as poor as they want. Try being born in those other countries to poor parents - it's infinitely harder to "make it."

A dumb God believing right winger born from poor immigrants like me can make six figures by the age of 25, why can't anyone else? If I were born in JAP/AUS/EUR I'd probably be poor.

Cliffs: America is great because of the wide income distribution. It means the cap on earnings is higher.

Despite your huge income you apparently don't understand some fundamental realities. Everyone CAN'T make 6 figures. Think about what the price of a hamburger would be if the guy flipping it made $100,000. And think about what the value of a dollar would be if the people at the very bottom made $100,000. That $100,000 would quickly be worth a fraction of what it is now. Please stop claiming that everyone can be rich if you can, because it's just not possible.

 

[flexy]

... and stop making up stories and fantasizing how incredible easy it is "for everyone".
The last time i was in the states it was ALSO the land of many people working in retail for $7.50/hour or working in a restaurant making barely $4/hour + tips. And i dont ever recall McD paying $9.50/h for burger flipping as someone claimed in this thread. And getting a good and well paying job was damn hard with layoffs left and right.

Many people are "forced" in such jobs due to their commitments and bills and might stay with such lower paying jobs for their life. The majority of people are NOT the people who found companies or dotcoms and make six++ figures in their early 20s. It is possible, yes..but its NOT as simple as people make it sound.