Trickle Down?Follow

Nice strawman. Starvation isn't an issue. Tell you what. Find me the statistics for the number of people in the US who died of starvation where the cause was that they simply couldn't afford to buy food (as opposed to the vast number who technically die of malnutrition, as a result of another medical condition like being in a coma, or suffering from Alzheimers).

It's a non-issue. And you know what? If all we ever paid for was food for starving people, I wouldn't have any problems. I've stated already that providing a bare minimum so people don't starve to death on the streets is fine. It's the attempt to provide a minimum standard of living well above that which becomes problematic.



We already provide K-12 education "free". Can we stop with the hyperbole?

The job market simply doesn't support more than about 20% of the population holding degrees. Want to go take a gander at Europe, where degrees inflation has gotten so bad that you practically have to have a 4 year degree to qualify to pick up trash on the side of the road? Providing free higher education at the expense of private enterprise capable of hiring those people when they graduate is self-defeating.




I think vastly more people would have usable health care if they were able to get into a career track in their 20s that allowed them to gain positions sufficient to provide health care by their late 30s when they actually need it.

This is a whole topic by itself btw.



When someone is 20? Yes. The problem is that everyone tries to compare the state of what someone can be provided for with welfare to what they'd get *today* if they entered the job market and then conclude that there aren't good jobs that can provide for them. What's lost in that is the time factor. If you can get a decent job at age 20, even one that does not provide medical care, or benefits, but which gives you experience and skills over time, by the time you are in your mid to late 30s, you *will* have a job that pays for those things, right when you need them.


What you're doing here is providing goods and services to people today, at the expense of their own futures down the line. The opportunities that allow them to move from a guy working in a coffee shop in his 20s, to someone making a nice wage on a production floor, or in an office somewhere are what we lose when we decide to provide the benefits of a good job to *everyone* right out of the gate.

Worse, this cost is passed on to the next generation. Want to go look at the statistics for children of welfare parents and their rates of themselves living on welfare of some kind? What we do with entitlement programs is increase the proportion of the population needing entitlement programs. Each generation, the numbers have gotten *worse* not better. If the assumption is that we should be helping people out of poverty, it's pretty obvious that the opposite is happening instead.

Intellectual labor? What does that have to do with anything?

The rich guy put his money at risk. That's why he earns a return. It's not about how hard he had to think to invest it. It's about the benefits that the money he invested did. If he invests in a company developing a new form of battery, and the company succeeds in making their product work and bring it to market, his money resulted not only in people getting jobs, but also in a better product hitting the market. One which consumers are willing to pay money for (which is why his investment grows).

He didn't work. His money did. You're focusing too much on whether or not someone expended labor, and not looking at how much "good" was done. In a free market, we value things based on how much someone will pay for them. If I start with an object that's worth 100 bucks, do something to it such that someone else is willing to pay 200 bucks for it, than regardless of whether you think what I did is worth 100 bucks, it *was* worth 100 bucks.

The best determinant of value is what someone is willing to pay for something. You can sit there and declare what something should be worth, but that's kinda meaningless. If I invest in something, and that thing increases in value (someone's willing to pay X amount more for the thing), then whatever I did was worth the gain I got.


Who the heck are you to arbitrarily determine what the value should be? Should we have an authoritarian government step in and decide that investing in X is only worth this much, but Y is worth more? That's not only ridiculous, but would fail miserably. Your ideas of social value fall apart when people are actually asked to decide what they are worth. That's really the issue here. You want things to be worth what you think they are based on some non-economic criteria, but the free market doesn't agree. So instead of accepting that your valuation system is wrong, you attempt to force things to work your way...

Nice that you're all advocates for "freedom" though. :)



Why is that wrong? The money came from somewhere, right? Someone earned it earlier. Are you arguing that if I work and labor and earn money, and then invest it and become wealthy, that I shouldn't be rewarded because all I did was take money I already had and put it at risk?

Silly me. I should have just blown all my money on other stuff I guess...


The funny thing is that so many people focus on the fact that the rich have money to invest, but miss the point that it's not having the money that allows them to invest. It's investing the money that allows them to have it. People become rich (and stay rich) because they spend less than they earn. It's that simple. Most people can't or wont do this, so they have no chance of ever being rich. Let's not punish those who made the right choices though, because it's not as easy as just having the money. Want to look up the numbers of big multi-million dollar lottery winners who were broke within 3-5 years?




The money produced some value. Period. You may not agree with how that valuation is calculated or derived, but ultimately and economy-wide, it did. When we look at all investments across the economy, overwhelmingly they increase in value as a group because they are spent doing things that provide jobs and better goods and services.

That's the part many people simply don't get.

Heading out, but I'll toss out one more comment about the whole idea that investment shouldn't gain in value because the rich guy didn't have to work hard.


Let me reiterate something. It's the value to someone else, not the amount of effort you expended that matters. If I own a shovel, and you need to dig a hole, the fact that you walk over to my house and ask to borrow it, and all I do is say the word "yes" does not diminish the value you gained by being able to use my shovel. It took me nearly zero effort to say the word "yes". Should the value of my shovel to you be measured purely in that manner?

I think not. If as a result of borrowing my shovel, you are able to dig a water channel around your house which prevents it from being flooded the next time it rains, my single word and loan of my property may have saved you thousands of dollars. Now, we might normally not calculate that dollar amount and charge anything for it either way, but the point is to illustrate that it's the value to the recipient of the investment that is being calculated, not the amount of effort of the person who owns it. My loan of a shovel to you was worth quite a bit, even if I didn't have to expend much effort to do so.


If all you value is direct labor, then that's all your economy will have. I suspect most of you don't realize just how many things exist today that would not if we restricted value to just labor.

"Fascism... affirms the irremediable, fruitful and beneficent inequality of men, who cannot be leveled by such a mechanical and extrinsic fact as universal suffrage."

Fascism has nothing to do with economics btw. Just thought I'd let you in on a secret. It has to do with the mechanism of gaining control over the population. Typically via a process of elevating the government and its leaders to exalted levels. Convincing people that the state is the highest and most important thing and that they should seek to serve it with a passion is fascism.


It has much more in common with socialism than with capitalism, since the focus is on the state over the individual. But that's just one of many many flaws with your reasoning so far...

Classic misunderstanding.

The cost to me to lend the shovel to you forms the floor of its value. The value you gain by borrowing it forms the ceiling. Somewhere in-between is the actual market value of me lending a shovel to you.

You're considering only one half of the equation. That's why you're failing to grasp this. You value things only in terms of what it costs someone, but do not look at how much it gains someone else. So of course, you undervalue investments. You just don't consider the massive gains they produce for other people, but those are pretty darn important.

You just don't consider the massive gains they produce for other people

Exactly. Look at the equity in Gabji's house. Ahahaha. In Gbaji-dreamland, all investments are profitable and risk doesn't exist.

So you think it's the governments responsibility to assume risks for people and charge them for assuming those risk? Do you work at freddie or fannie? I'd like to apply for a loan from you.

But I don't understand. If I work for minimum wage which is below the cost of living, eventually I'll be able to save up enough capital to get myself an education and claw myself toward a better job. What? I'll never be able to do that, because I'll be barely scraping by, permanently unable to save money? Welp, time to perform some mental gymnastics that allow me to accept my place in the system. Yes. This is what I deserve for being born poor and black in the city.

So your idea of equity includes penalizing a person based on who their family is and who they know? And the more I read the absolute nonsense and hateful rhetoric being vomitted from your pc the more I wonder if learning to read and write was worth the effort.

I'm sure you know 95% of the millionaires in the US are first generation. I guess it's easy to justify your support of thievery when you minimilize the victims.

CULL THE WEAKEST OF THE HERD

I'm educated and fairly well off. Maybe you should return to school, as to learn to better recognize figures of speech?