Originally posted by: Capitalizt
?Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.? - Milton Friedman
This is your problem Craig...You can't seem to recognize this.
What a joke. You really get off on the wrong foot when you say something so false, and even more so when you tell me my view so completely wrongly.
Milton Friedman in my opinion was a son of a bitch who was wrong on big things (read Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine"), but I absolutely *as my post made clear* have a pie that changes size based on the policies as part of how I view economic policy. When I talk about policies increasing and decreasing productivity, what am I talking about but changing the size of the pie?
Naturally, when you begin with such a falsehood, the conclusions you reach are worthless.
Nobody is being hurt simply because someone gets wealthy.
Here comes the ideological recitation from you, I see.
That's a wrong generalization. You have to look at how they become wealthy to determine that. If I come in to the fishing village and buy the fishing rights and tell all the fishermen that now they can fish for low wages or get out of town, they're hurt that I was able to buy those rights, even though I can make money from them.
If everyone in your community doubled their incomes but you, you would be poorer, because many prices are based on the relative wealth of the buyers. Homes would become nearly twice as expensive. Babysitters would cost nearly twice as much. You are hurt in your purchase of anything affected by the buyers' wealth when many others become wealthier and you don't. It goes further, of course - if some in your community gain a thousand times the wealth, and donate to political candidates...
Sometimes, it might be 'justified', when society benefits from a larger and more efficient fishing operation; other times it's not, when it's just a money maker for the new owner.
But your statement is just the sort of ideological dogma that is the enemy of understanding the economic issues and how people are affected, it *shuts down* discussion.
People who "hoard" money are not a drag on the economy.
Yes, they are. While some of the money does some good, they're a whole lot about their wealth increasing their ownership of the assets of the society, locking up those assets from being available as incentives for productivity to others. On the one hand, Henry Ford (for all his flaws) was 'productive' and rewarded. On the other hand, most of the Walton family (owners of a lot of Wal-Mart stock) are basically leeches, compared to that wealth being held by people doing more with it. How would harm society for the $100 billion in their pockets to be distributed to other people where it was more actively funding economic productivity, instead of mainly increasing the ownership, the personal wealth, of Waltons?
You are not getting that as the top 1% own 20%, 25%, 30%, 35% and more of the assets in society, that's an increasing drag on the productivity, with fewer crumbs for people.
Look, I'll try a nerd analogy. Why do you think it is in the game Civilization that the more centralized wealth and power systems are so less productive than more democratic ones?
We're not talking about Sam Walton here, when he 'innovates retail' and is rewarded. We're talking about when wealth is excessively concentrated, as in an oligarchy.
Reward for productivity is good. Macro-level concentration of wealth is bad. But you have your little 'it doesn't matter' ideology script and so you probably could care less.
How convenient for the ultra wealthy that you vote for their interests over yours and society's. The funding for the right-wing think tank propaganda was well spent.
Even if we ignore the benefits of their savings (which are used to provide loans to individuals, small businesses, etc), the very fact that they have made so much profit in the free market is PROOF that they are already being incredibly productive and helpful to the lower and middle classes!
No, it's not proof of any such thing. It shows that 'the rich get richer' by the power of ownership and the profit going to them.
Some wealthy people do things to earn it, and some don't, but have the wealth somehow that makes yet more.
Tell you what, To acquire so much wealth necessitates that you create jobs...that you provide a product or service that makes the public HAPPY! The only way to *legally* make money in a free country is by satisfying the wants and needs of the public.
That's not only false, it's the most naive statement I've seen in this forum in months. No wonder you are confused. You're like a schoolgirl with a crush on the free market.
"You're wrong, dad, he's a WONDERFUL boy! <swoon>"
*Some* wealth is created that pretty little textbook way, and liberals like that type of wealth creation. Your naivete hides a lot of other, destructive types under the rug and allows them because you happily skip along singing the "Yay free market" song that doesn't bother to notice how it's working.
I tell you, arguing with free marketers reminds me most of arguing with communists, and I think I have to give the upper hand to the communists for being able to learn.
And yes competition is a good thing and there is a role for government in preventing blatant abuse like your hypothetical one oil company scenario.
Whoa, go back to your concession. Why is an oil monopoly a 'blatant abuse'? Don't just agree and then go on to defend the same basic problems. Isn't opposing the big oil monopoly, as you do, 'hating them for their wealth', isn't it based on 'jealousy', aren't they simply wonderfully efficient and 'deserving' of the rewards if they get to be a monopoly?
I'd like to make the poiint there to show you how empty the rhetoric your side uses is.
I also agree that companies should pay for disasters like Exxon Valdez...but unfortunately the regulatory tendencies of the left go FAR beyond breaking up monopolies.
Except that the right wing politicians are fighting hard to keep Exxon from any regulations that prevent such disasters, and with 'tort reform' they reduce the small guy's ability to get any justice when the 'big guys' act terribley and do things that hurt people. If the courtroom door is shut in your face, you're screwed. Exxon still hasn't paid a dime to the locals who were so harmed by their behavior, 20 years later, as I recall.
The current definition of corporate "abuse" seems to mean "made alot of money"..The constant calls for a windfall profits tax from the "progressive caucus" in congress is all the evidence you need of this. The modern left wants the government's claws in nearly every aspect of business. This forces entrepreneurs to pay thousands each year just to cut through the federal red tape and puts us at a competitive disadvantage.
"us", huh? Bull. The oil industry is a unique case because of the combination of the industry having such huge increases in wealth not from anything they did but from the situation increasing the price of oil, which is taking a big hit on the American citizen, such that they're talking about some 'corrective action' for the society who has to pay those higher prices getting back some benefit, instead of leaving the many billions not 'earned' but a 'windfall' in the pockets of big oil (to fund more anti-global warming campaigns, in part).
You post the next line in the ideology, the one where vague beauracrats and 'regulations' cause such harm, empty air behind which you try to gut needed regulation.
And I have to disagree with you that "The left is *in favor* of people doing very nicely for being productive,". Sorry, but actions speak louder than words...
And ideology epeaks louder to you than actions.
You are insisting on your straw man, because you are quite invested in it's being true. How much of your ideology makes sense if liberals want people to be prosperous?
You know, you ought to let a little reality influence your views. If the liberals are so terrible for the marketplace, why don't you chart the last century of stock market performance under Democrats and Republicans? 100 data samples start to even out any anomilies like looking at one presidency can have. Oh, I'll save you the time if you want the gist of the result, since I did look it up - the stock market (and other major economic indcicators such as growth and unemployment) are clearly better consistently under the democrats. Hm!
Do you want to keep going with the nonsense ideology, or learn how to help the nation?
and if they left truly wanted people to be rewarded for taking risks and succeeding, they would not be continuously calling for increased capital gains taxes, income taxes, corporate taxes, etc. If you really want productive people to be rewarded, you should simply reduce the PENALTY (tax rate) for their success. They will do far more for society with that money than any do-gooder bureaucrat could ever hope to achieve.
And if you had any idea about economics, you would not simply post unconditional calls for moving rates a certain direction without any mention of the current rates. Calling for increased capital gains tax is *exactly* what they would be doing, when they want the wealthy investor class who is making the lion's share of income in the nation to stop getting a lower tax rate than the working class who pay higher rates on 'ordinary income' every year, while the 'owner class' sits on 15% rate tax-deferred money. They'd be for lightening the relative tax burden on the general public by doing that - and by using the money to balance the budget, reducing the huge waste of the interest paid (what is it, 8% of the entire budget and a third of all discretionary spending).
Your posting talking points is not worth rebutting them. You clearly are an injector of kool-aid when you make the nutty claims that a dollar for an extremely wealthy person, who isn't being 'incented' but is rather well into the realm of 'abusive wealth collection', will do more good for society than spending it to reuduce the debt or pay for Medicare or put it in the pocket of a consumer who will spend it, not simply bid up some asset's value.
Like I said, the right-wing think tanks propaganda funding was money well spent, when it clearly has conquered you like this, warrior for the billionares and enemy of society.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying billionares are bad, I'm saying that the 'billionare agenda' in the current environment, where they're greatly increasing the share of the pie, is bad.
It was one of them who said, 'Class warfare is going on, and my [the billionare] class is winning'.