(April 18, 2015 at 2:53 pm)Hatshepsut Wrote:

(April 18, 2015 at 2:03 pm)Heywood Wrote: What is being argued is the disparity between the rich and the poor...Are the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer?  The truth is everyone is getting richer.

It's that "relative" thing, I suppose. It is possible for everyone to get richer while the gap between top and bottom increases. For instance, say the endpoints are $1000 and $4000 at time A, then $1500 and $9000 at time B. Everyone is richer at time B yet the gap has gone up from $3000 to $7500, and it's gone up in percentage terms, from 300% to 500%. This is what I believe is happening in the USA and probably worldwide as well, if wealth and income are measured in money terms.

There is a problem with that $ sign. The rich are subject to a lot of "paper" valuation that can balloon or vanish overnight while physical circumstances remain unchanged. I think part of the increasing disparity is in artificial monetary valuations that don't reflect realities of well-being and lifestyle. But monetary valuations do confer real political power. The building of a plutocratic stratosphere above the rest of society is an ill omen in a democracy, so I look at this trend with some fear.  

Dollars do not have absolutely the same value for everyone.   Bill Gates could wipe his ass with $100 bills and flush them down the toilet every day and his life style wouldn't change a bit.  If Brian did that he would starve to death.  A dollar is worth more to Brian than it is to Bill Gates.  A dollar gives more utility to Brian than it does to Bill Gates.  So while those Bill Gates might accumulate dollars faster than Brian what we really have to ask is Bill Gates gaining more utility from money faster than Brian.   I don't think that he is.

(April 18, 2015 at 3:01 pm)Heywood Wrote:

(April 18, 2015 at 2:53 pm)Hatshepsut Wrote: It's that "relative" thing, I suppose. It is possible for everyone to get richer while the gap between top and bottom increases. For instance, say the endpoints are $1000 and $4000 at time A, then $1500 and $9000 at time B. Everyone is richer at time B yet the gap has gone up from $3000 to $7500, and it's gone up in percentage terms, from 300% to 500%. This is what I believe is happening in the USA and probably worldwide as well, if wealth and income are measured in money terms.

There is a problem with that $ sign. The rich are subject to a lot of "paper" valuation that can balloon or vanish overnight while physical circumstances remain unchanged. I think part of the increasing disparity is in artificial monetary valuations that don't reflect realities of well-being and lifestyle. But monetary valuations do confer real political power. The building of a plutocratic stratosphere above the rest of society is an ill omen in a democracy, so I look at this trend with some fear.  

Dollars do not have absolutely the same value for everyone.   Bill Gates could wipe his ass with $100 bills and flush them down the toilet every day and his life style wouldn't change a bit.  If Brian did that he would starve to death.  A dollar is worth more to Brian than it is to Bill Gates.  A dollar gives more utility to Brian than it does to Bill Gates.  So while those Bill Gates might accumulate dollars faster than Brian what we really have to ask is Bill Gates gaining more utility from money faster than Brian.   I don't think that he is.

Oh bullshit. 

Nice try faking empathy though. If you really believed that first line you'd agree with Nick Hanauer instead of justifying the same old GOP trickle down bullshit.

The best "charity" direct from the employer to the employee, not tax cuts for the rich, not big business charities or religious charities you get tax deductions for. DIRECT in the form of better pay and lower cost of living ratio. The pay gap is killing us and will turn us into a third world country if it continues, or lead to a revolution.  Even NICK a billionaire warns idiots like you about those pitchforks. Now again, since I am dirt poor, I most certainly would not ask you to take my word for it.

(April 18, 2015 at 3:01 pm)Heywood Wrote: Dollars do not have absolutely the same value for everyone.   Bill Gates could wipe his ass with $100 bills...A dollar gives more utility to Brian than it does to Bill Gates.

Poor Mr. Gates may well be missing out on his utility increments but he didn't miss out on his chance to quash the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, which his lawyers settled on very favorable terms. Albeit short of allowing Microsoft to bar all other software brands from pre-installation on all Windows computers as he had hoped to do.

At least Gates continues the fine tradition of philanthropy ala Andrew Carnegie and Free Libraries. The current role model for CEO and investment mogul behavior lies closer to that of Bernie Madoff.

(April 18, 2015 at 2:52 pm)Brian37 Wrote: [quote='KUSA' pid='923121' dateline='1429382747']
Don't care, the richest person on this planet today wasn't around 4 billion years ago and wont be around 4 billion years from now.

4 billion years ago or from now don't matter. Only now matters.

(April 18, 2015 at 4:19 pm)Hatshepsut Wrote:

(April 18, 2015 at 3:01 pm)Heywood Wrote: Dollars do not have absolutely the same value for everyone.   Bill Gates could wipe his ass with $100 bills...A dollar gives more utility to Brian than it does to Bill Gates.

Poor Mr. Gates may well be missing out on his utility increments but he didn't miss out on his chance to quash the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, which his lawyers settled on very favorable terms. Albeit short of allowing Microsoft to bar all other software brands from pre-installation on all Windows computers as he had hoped to do.

At least Gates continues the fine tradition of philanthropy ala Andrew Carnegie and Free Libraries. The current role model for CEO and investment mogul behavior lies closer to that of Bernie Madoff.

You said it. The investment that built the middle class was real investment, it was investing in lives and jobs. The type of investment we have now works more like a Vagas Casino where the house knows no matter if some win occasionally they always long term win even if they lose. Wall Street and big banks most certainly operate like Berny Madoff, and that is easy to do when you pump money into politics to get laws written to allow you to do that. Legal and moral are still two separate issues. Slavery was legal once too.

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(April 18, 2015 at 4:23 pm)KUSA Wrote:

(April 18, 2015 at 2:52 pm)Brian37 Wrote:

(April 18, 2015 at 2:45 pm)KUSA Wrote: Don't care, the richest person on this planet today wasn't around 4 billion years ago and wont be around 4 billion years from now.

4 billion years ago or from now don't matter. Only now matters.

I agree, so if it is my life why would I be a loser? Because I am not living my life by your script?

(April 18, 2015 at 4:26 pm)Brian37 Wrote: The type of investment we have now works more like a Vegas Casino where the house knows no matter if some win occasionally they always long term win even if they lose. Wall Street and big banks...pump money into politics to get laws written to allow...

...commercial banks to play the investment banking game in the first place, after Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999, and to trade on their own accounts as well. Banks were doing that back in 1929. But although the banks were wrapping those subprime mortgages into their poisonous packages, it was non-bank firms like Bear Stearns that got Cayned in the fallout. This is where my knowledge of the investment world comes up short. I don't have a degree in finance and really don't understand most of what happened in the meltdown of '08.

I'm under the impression that the markets have always been a casino, but more like poker than roulette. The house takes a cut, but it's really investors playing each other. And your puny 401(k) account is a guppy swimming around an ocean full of sharks like Enron, a firm noted for selling gas pipeline futures for Russia's Gazprom among other things. What's worse is the hammerheads all have cloaking devices like the Klingon battlecruisers on Star Trek  so we don't even know what's out there now that Enron and Bear Stearns are dead and Arthur Andersen lies chastised by the king. The rules have changed, new accounting dodges have been deployed, so we'll just have to wait for the next episode of Too Big to Fail. What I fear is that one day one of these implosions will bring the U.S. government down with it, especially if the Tea Party makes good on its threats to default the public debt in such a crisis.

You don't need to be an expert in any economy, it should work like this, when it crashes, like 08s or the great depression, put the CEOs who cause it in prison, put policies in place that when CEOs take risks with other people's money, they have skin in the game too. The way it works now they aren't writing laws that have any real meaningful punishment .

(April 18, 2015 at 4:19 pm)Hatshepsut Wrote:

(April 18, 2015 at 3:01 pm)Heywood Wrote: Dollars do not have absolutely the same value for everyone.   Bill Gates could wipe his ass with $100 bills...A dollar gives more utility to Brian than it does to Bill Gates.

Poor Mr. Gates may well be missing out on his utility increments but he didn't miss out on his chance to quash the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, which his lawyers settled on very favorable terms. Albeit short of allowing Microsoft to bar all other software brands from pre-installation on all Windows computers as he had hoped to do.

At least Gates continues the fine tradition of philanthropy ala Andrew Carnegie and Free Libraries. The current role model for CEO and investment mogul behavior lies closer to that of Bernie Madoff.

Hatshepsut, you are changing the subject.  Nothing you wrote has anything to do with the disparity between the rich and poor. 
  

(April 19, 2015 at 6:17 am)Heywood Wrote:

(April 18, 2015 at 4:19 pm)Hatshepsut Wrote: Poor Mr. Gates may well be missing out on his utility increments but he didn't miss out on his chance to quash the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, which his lawyers settled on very favorable terms. Albeit short of allowing Microsoft to bar all other software brands from pre-installation on all Windows computers as he had hoped to do.

At least Gates continues the fine tradition of philanthropy ala Andrew Carnegie and Free Libraries. The current role model for CEO and investment mogul behavior lies closer to that of Bernie Madoff.

Hatshepsut, you are changing the subject.  Nothing you wrote has anything to do with the disparity between the rich and poor. 
  

No, we simply see through your bullshit.

Alot like when we debate religion, someone will quote a verse, and we skip the crap and remind them even before you get to the first word of the book of myth, you have to establish that a god is required in the first place.

All your side does is simply argue "It is right the way I do it". Same crap all religions argue, same selfish self absorbed argument.

When you say the way you view economics works, no one should argue it doesn't. The issue is for who. We did the "fuck the poor" and deregulation for the past 30 years, and all it has done is sucked the money up to the top an exploded the pay gap, and countless times when wen point to rich people who agree with us, you willfully ignore that.

And just like with religion, when people stand up to it, you either fake empathy, or play victim.

(April 18, 2015 at 11:37 pm)Brian37 Wrote: You don't need to be an expert in any economy, it should work like this, when it crashes, like 08s or the great depression, put the CEOs who cause it in prison...

Leona Helmsley once told a judge, "only little people go to prison." Not quite true, she got 4 months for tax evasion. But we can't throw them all in jail. Not all of them are criminals. Superpredatory minorities aside, I imagine a lot of this involves making bad moves at the wrong time with no adult supervision around. Why punish, when the Nanny State can put on her apron and regulate instead?

(April 19, 2015 at 6:17 am)Heywood Wrote:

I Wrote:The current role model for CEO and investment mogul behavior lies closer...

Hatshepsut, you are changing the subject.  Nothing you wrote has anything to do with the disparity between the rich and poor. 

Begging pardon. Those $100 utility wipes you were talking about. Doesn't that lead to the geometric progression in the first place?

Suppose $100/day is considered a “basic” income.

Then, to feel noticeably elevated, you need 10% more, or $110. But once at $110 you still need 10% more to feel elevated again, or $121. Then the next step is $133.10. Our society has 100 steps of this kind of elevation at 10% per step. And the 100th step up gets you to $1,387,000/day.

That’s why we have such a huge gap between rich and poor. "Utility" is a synonym for "feed the ego" on the way up and a matter of not wanting to spend the time to monitor $1 if you have millions of them. On the way down,  however, that $1 acquires utility as if by magic. We get real tightfisted whenever Josh Brown's investment blog gets nervous about the economy. In the Depression, no bombs or massive earthquakes damaged any American workplaces. The managers just locked the doors and walked away. But it's still utility. Even a billionaire values every dollar if it starts looking like those dollars are circling the drain.