RE: I Wish This Was A Joke
January 22, 2015 at 3:13 pm
(This post was last modified: January 22, 2015 at 4:28 pm by Heywood.)
(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.
(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.
(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.
