(January 21, 2015 at 8:19 am)Cato Wrote: Tortured language and willful ignorance; or, perhaps, intentional deception. You act as if it's difficult to convert money or 0s in a ledger into real goods (stuff). You also have to ignore that money is the market's method of choice for wealth distribution, not stuff. The Gilligan's Island example is pathetic. Money is simply a means of exchange and would serve little purpose in any environment with seven people and limited resources. This line of reasoning is a non-starter as a means of comparison to a global market.

How exactly are the downtrodden expected to magically create more stuff? This is the solution you seem to suggest, right? They own no land, have no capital, and lack access to natural resources. Again, where precisely do you think more stuff is going to come from?

You agree that money is just a tool humans use to exchange wealth.....you said it yourself....that money is the market's method of choice for wealth distribution. The real goods have to exist in the first place in order for money to be exchanged for them.

How about instead of actually taking pieces of paper and 0s off ledgers away from rich people and giving it to the poor, we just give everyone one billion dollars. Easy to do....we just have to turn on the printing presses. Doing this would cause the percentage of money held by rich people to decrease, and the percentage of money held by poor people to increase. It would not, however, substantially improve people lives. Why? Cause money isn't stuff and stuff it what makes people lives better.

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(January 21, 2015 at 11:14 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: We don't live on Gilligan's island. We live in a world where Mr. and Mrs. Howell can use that money to get all the stuff they want. And a lot of power, too.

The fraction of the stuff the Mr and Mrs Howells use in the world is tiny compared to the fraction of stuff the deck hands like Gilligan use.

(January 21, 2015 at 12:18 pm)Heywood Wrote:

(January 21, 2015 at 11:14 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: We don't live on Gilligan's island. We live in a world where Mr. and Mrs. Howell can use that money to get all the stuff they want. And a lot of power, too.

The fraction of the stuff the Mr and Mrs Howells use in the world is tiny compared to the fraction of stuff the deck hands like Gilligan use.

Are you seriously claiming this?

Take your average construction-worker. he has a truck with a toolbox full of tools. he has a smallish house, and probably a second car. These are the things he uses.

Now take your average 1-percenter. He has a limo, a couple of classic cars, a sports car, and an entire workshop full of high-end tools he rarely uses. He has a scanning electron microscope for entertainment in the Media Room of his favorite mansion, as well as a Summer House, a Winter House, a Lake Cabin (with boat), a Villa on the Riviera, and at least one guest house. If he rides, he has a stable full of horses and all the equipment that requires. He owns or leases a private jet and a helicopter. His house is fully wired and networked with computers and TVs in every room, including the bar, the den, the rumpus room, the media room, the poolhouse, and probably another half-dozen rooms you and I don't have (and never will).

And that's just the start.

I have worked for these people, setting up and repairing IT networks. I've seen how they live, and what they use.

And you, sir, are full of shit.

(January 21, 2015 at 12:34 pm)Davka Wrote:

(January 21, 2015 at 12:18 pm)Heywood Wrote: The fraction of the stuff the Mr and Mrs Howells use in the world is tiny compared to the fraction of stuff the deck hands like Gilligan use.

Are you seriously claiming this?

Take your average construction-worker. he has a truck with a toolbox full of tools. he has a smallish house, and probably a second car. These are the things he uses.

Now take your average 1-percenter. He has a limo, a couple of classic cars, a sports car, and an entire workshop full of high-end tools he rarely uses. He has a scanning electron microscope for entertainment in the Media Room of his favorite mansion, as well as a Summer House, a Winter House, a Lake Cabin (with boat), a Villa on the Riviera, and at least one guest house. If he rides, he has a stable full of horses and all the equipment that requires. He owns or leases a private jet and a helicopter. His house is fully wired and networked with computers and TVs in every room, including the bar, the den, the rumpus room, the media room, the poolhouse, and probably another half-dozen rooms you and I don't have (and never will).

And that's just the start.

I have worked for these people, setting up and repairing IT networks. I've seen how they live, and what they use.

And you, sir, are full of shit.

If you took all the cars owned by the 99 percenters and stacked them up against all the cars owned by the 1 percenters, which stack would be higher? Do the same with TVs and computers. The population of non rich people have more stuff....more tvs....more cars....more refrigerators....more furnaces...more copper pipes etc than the population of poor people.

I agree that a rich person has way more stuff than you. What I am saying is that if you took all his stuff and distributed among all the poor. Peoples lives don't improves very much. The rich guy just doesn't have enough stuff to make a meaningful difference. Your jealousy might be curbed but that is about it.

(January 21, 2015 at 12:18 pm)Heywood Wrote: The fraction of the stuff the Mr and Mrs Howells use in the world is tiny compared to the fraction of stuff the deck hands like Gilligan use.

So you're saying most of the resources at their disposal are of no practical use to them, while millions starve for want of them?

(January 21, 2015 at 12:57 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote:

(January 21, 2015 at 12:18 pm)Heywood Wrote: The fraction of the stuff the Mr and Mrs Howells use in the world is tiny compared to the fraction of stuff the deck hands like Gilligan use.

So you're saying most of the resources at their disposal are of no practical use to them, while millions starve for want of them?

I'd like to have Bill Gate's house and all his stuff. I sure you would too. I'm sure a whole lot of people would. Suppose we kill off Bill Gates and take his stuff. By the time everything is divided up among the 300 million other Americans, you might end up with a square of toilet paper.

(January 21, 2015 at 1:01 pm)Heywood Wrote:

(January 21, 2015 at 12:57 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: So you're saying most of the resources at their disposal are of no practical use to them, while millions starve for want of them?

I'd like to have Bill Gate's house and all his stuff. I sure you would too. I'm sure a whole lot of people would. Suppose we kill off Bill Gates and take his stuff. By the time everything is divided up among the 300 million other Americans, you might end up with a square of toilet paper.

You seem to be changing the subject. But if you divide 77 billion by 300 million, it's over $250 apiece. It won't make anyone rich or change their lives much, but it's far more than a square of toilet paper.

And you wouldn't be dividing it by 300 million. I wouldn't even give any of it to Americans, personally, but if I were, I would give it to the bottom .01% (about 300,000 people), and that's about a quarter of a million each, life-changing and life-securing money. Enough to ensure good health care, good education, and a secure retirement.

I wouldn't do Bill Gates like that, but let's stop pretending the wealth of the richest man in the world is insignificant in the larger scheme of things. One man could lift 300,000 Americans from the depths of poverty (by American standards) to the middle class, and almost guarantee the same for their children, in the form of a trust fund for their healthcare, education, home purchase subsidy, and retirement, maybe even a minimum income. A quarter million would change my life, and I'm already middle class (though I've been in the bottom .01%).

(January 21, 2015 at 12:50 pm)Heywood Wrote:

(January 21, 2015 at 12:34 pm)Davka Wrote: Are you seriously claiming this?

Take your average construction-worker. he has a truck with a toolbox full of tools. he has a smallish house, and probably a second car. These are the things he uses.

Now take your average 1-percenter. He has a limo, a couple of classic cars, a sports car, and an entire workshop full of high-end tools he rarely uses. He has a scanning electron microscope for entertainment in the Media Room of his favorite mansion, as well as a Summer House, a Winter House, a Lake Cabin (with boat), a Villa on the Riviera, and at least one guest house. If he rides, he has a stable full of horses and all the equipment that requires. He owns or leases a private jet and a helicopter. His house is fully wired and networked with computers and TVs in every room, including the bar, the den, the rumpus room, the media room, the poolhouse, and probably another half-dozen rooms you and I don't have (and never will).

And that's just the start.

I have worked for these people, setting up and repairing IT networks. I've seen how they live, and what they use.

And you, sir, are full of shit.

If you took all the cars owned by the 99 percenters and stacked them up against all the cars owned by the 1 percenters, which stack would be higher? Do the same with TVs and computers. The population of non rich people have more stuff....more tvs....more cars....more refrigerators....more furnaces...more copper pipes etc than the population of poor people.

I agree that a rich person has way more stuff than you. What I am saying is that if you took all his stuff and distributed among all the poor. Peoples lives don't improves very much. The rich guy just doesn't have enough stuff to make a meaningful difference. Your jealousy might be curbed but that is about it.

Include cash in that pile of 'stuff' and *presto* half the stuff in the world gets redistributed among the poor. Let's not pretend that won't make a difference.

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(January 21, 2015 at 1:01 pm)Heywood Wrote:

(January 21, 2015 at 12:57 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: So you're saying most of the resources at their disposal are of no practical use to them, while millions starve for want of them?

I'd like to have Bill Gate's house and all his stuff. I sure you would too. I'm sure a whole lot of people would. Suppose we kill off Bill Gates and take his stuff. By the time everything is divided up among the 300 million other Americans, you might end up with a square of toilet paper.

We're not talking about ONE RICH PERSON's stuff, we're talking about HALF THE STUFF IN THE FUCKING WORLD!!!!!

And frankly, I don't need any more stuff. But there are a whole lot of people who do.

(January 21, 2015 at 1:14 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote:

(January 21, 2015 at 1:01 pm)Heywood Wrote: I'd like to have Bill Gate's house and all his stuff. I sure you would too. I'm sure a whole lot of people would. Suppose we kill off Bill Gates and take his stuff. By the time everything is divided up among the 300 million other Americans, you might end up with a square of toilet paper.

You seem to be changing the subject. But if you divide 77 billion by 300 million, it's over $250 apiece. It won't make anyone rich or change their lives much, but it's far more than a square of toilet paper.

And you wouldn't be dividing it by 300 million. I wouldn't even give any of it to Americans, personally, but if I were, I would give it to the bottom .01% (about 300,000 people), and that's about a quarter of a million each, life-changing and life-securing money. Enough to ensure good health care, good education, and a secure retirement.

I wouldn't do Bill Gates like that, but let's stop pretending the wealth of the richest man in the world is insignificant in the larger scheme of things. One man could lift 300,000 Americans from the depths of poverty (by American standards) to the middle class, and almost guarantee the same for their children, in the form of a trust fund for their healthcare, education, home purchase subsidy, and retirement, maybe even a minimum income. A quarter million would change my life, and I'm already middle class (though I've been in the bottom .01%).

Me changing the subject?

I thought we were talking about dividing up the resources Bill Gates uses....not his money. You asked, "So you're saying most of the resources at their disposal are of no practical use to them, while millions starve for want of them?".

Bill Gates doesn't have Wharehouses full of stuff that he can buy. The only resources that are exclusively at his disposal are the ones he already owns.....like his house and toilet paper. Those other resources....well they are at the disposal of everyone else too. They are already in the market....making people other than Bill Gates better off.

If you took Bill Gates money and divided it up, people would just bid up the prices of things already in the market that Bill Gates wasn't using anyways.

(January 21, 2015 at 1:35 pm)Heywood Wrote:

(January 21, 2015 at 1:14 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: You seem to be changing the subject. But if you divide 77 billion by 300 million, it's over $250 apiece. It won't make anyone rich or change their lives much, but it's far more than a square of toilet paper.

And you wouldn't be dividing it by 300 million. I wouldn't even give any of it to Americans, personally, but if I were, I would give it to the bottom .01% (about 300,000 people), and that's about a quarter of a million each, life-changing and life-securing money. Enough to ensure good health care, good education, and a secure retirement.

I wouldn't do Bill Gates like that, but let's stop pretending the wealth of the richest man in the world is insignificant in the larger scheme of things. One man could lift 300,000 Americans from the depths of poverty (by American standards) to the middle class, and almost guarantee the same for their children, in the form of a trust fund for their healthcare, education, home purchase subsidy, and retirement, maybe even a minimum income. A quarter million would change my life, and I'm already middle class (though I've been in the bottom .01%).

Me changing the subject?

I thought we were talking about dividing up the resources Bill Gates uses....not his money. You asked, "So you're saying most of the resources at their disposal are of no practical use to them, while millions starve for want of them?".

Bill Gates doesn't have Wharehouses full of stuff that he can buy. The only resources that are exclusively at his disposal are the ones he already owns.....like his house and toilet paper. Those other resources....well they are at the disposal of everyone else too. They are already in the market....making people other than Bill Gates better off.

Sometimes you seem deliberately obtuse. If you want to talk in terms of stuff, Bill Gates has a lot of stuff in the form of assets and currrency of which he can't make direct use. Let him keep his houses and cars and toilet paper; and what's left would still be enough to lift a few hundred thousand Americans out of poverty.

(January 21, 2015 at 1:35 pm)Heywood Wrote: If you took Bill Gates money and divided it up, people would just bid up the prices of things already in the market that Bill Gates wasn't using anyways.

The money has already been printed, so it's not increasing the money supply. It's only .01% of the population, so it's not drastically affecting the market for stuff. And it's in the form of a trust fund that doesn't put all that money out in one year, but over a lifetime, helping with the big expenses that very poor people usually can't meet but that middle class people can take for granted: good health insurance, a college education or trade school, home ownership, and some cash flow in tough times. Stuff middle class people usually get a lot of help with from their parents. Stuff that the .01% will now be able to pass on to their kids.

Gates seems to be determined to do something similar on his own, and I admire him for that. And of course, it's not all on him. A 1% tax his net worth and on net worth of the rest of the top .01% (about 300,000 Americans) could accomplish the same thing in less than a generation. The top ten richest Americans have about 485 billion between them, 1% of that would be about 4.85 billion, divided by the 300,000 poorest people, that's about $16,000 apiece, save it up for 15 years and you've got your quarter million for the 300,000 poorest people, and you can do it again in 15 years for the next poorest 300,000 people. With the other 299,990 in the top .01%, it will probably go considerably faster than that. And maybe a .1% tax on the rest of the 1%, there are about 3 million of them, and we don't want to burden them unduly since they're so much poorer than the .01%. That's 3 million of the US's nearly 10 million millionaires.

This isn't an actual proposal, I'm not economist enough to be floating serious plans, I'm just showing what is possible. If I were being serious, for starters, I would have used the 300,000 poorest households instead of people in my example, The average size of an American house hold is 2.54 people, so benefiting the poorest 300,000 households would, conservitively estimating, benefit 762,000 people.

All I'm saying is, it's not chicken feed. And it won't go up in smoke unless it's just handed out willy-nilly. There's all kinds of complications to take into account that I haven't. For instance, that's a lot of home buying, which means a lot of home building. It's a lot of educating, which means a lot of jobs for educators. Since the poor won't be forced to use the money for houses or education, they can always choose to put it aside for retirement, so even if .01% of American households caused a lot of inflation because they're buying housing and education, they can afford to be choosy about how much they're willing to pay. What they don't spend they can invest, just like a 401 K, and it could be theirs when they retire.

(January 21, 2015 at 1:23 pm)Davka Wrote: We're not talking about ONE RICH PERSON's stuff, we're talking about HALF THE STUFF IN THE FUCKING WORLD!!!!!

And frankly, I don't need any more stuff. But there are a whole lot of people who do.

Negative Davka, rich people do not have half the stuff in the fucking world. That is my point. Rich people have half the fucking 0s in the ledgers of the world. You can't eat a 0. You can't drink a 0. You can't drive a 0.

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(January 21, 2015 at 6:40 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: The money has already been printed, so it's not increasing the money supply. It's only .01% of the population, so it's not drastically affecting the market for stuff. And it's in the form of a trust fund that doesn't put all that money out in one year, but over a lifetime, helping with the big expenses that very poor people usually can't meet but that middle class people can take for granted: good health insurance, a college education or trade school, home ownership, and some cash flow in tough times. Stuff middle class people usually get a lot of help with from their parents. Stuff that the .01% will now be able to pass on to their kids.

Where is that money? Sitting in a vault? If it is than it really isn't part of the money supply until Bill puts into circulation. If its out in circulation already because banks loaned it out to people then Bill doesn't really have it. Its already been distributed. People other than Bill are already using it to exchange goods and services.

In order to make peoples lives better you have give them real stuff. How does moving money from one person's ledger to another person's ledger magically result in the addition of new stuff in the world? By taking away buying power from Bill Gates and giving it to someone else? Bill already did that by putting his money in a bank or investing it on other businesses.

If you want to make people better off at the expense of Bill Gates, what you have to do is take away his stuff. Bill Gates doesn't have enough stuff to divvy up among everyone such that it improves their lives in a meaningful way.

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(January 21, 2015 at 1:14 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: And you wouldn't be dividing it by 300 million. I wouldn't even give any of it to Americans, personally, but if I were, I would give it to the bottom .01% (about 300,000 people), and that's about a quarter of a million each, life-changing and life-securing money. Enough to ensure good health care, good education, and a secure retirement.

The problem with this thinking is it assumes that there is this vast supply of healthcare and education that is simply not being utilized because poor people don't have any money. The argument then goes that if you give poor people money, demand for healthcare and education will increase, so more of it will be produced.

The world produces things for people. Would it be fair to say that you would like to see the world to produce less things for Bill Gates of the world and more things for the Joe Dirts of the world? Now suppose the world stopped producing things for the Bill Gates of the world and diverted all that production capacity to producing things for the Joe Dirts of the world. Would the Joe Dirts be substantially better off? I don't think they would.

Your plan doesn't even divert all the worlds production capacity away from benefiting the Bill Gates and toward benefiting the Joe Dirts. It only diverts a very small fraction of it. I just don't see your plan being all that effective.