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I spend most of my income buying necessities. These necessities are sold at a profit for the owners of the businesses. Therefore I am having a portion of the money I spend transferred from me, a 99%er, to the owning 1%ers. That makes me a provider and them a recipient.....
I'm not buying your explanation of being a provider by virtue of being a customer.
Man, when I can walk into any grocery store and select the most useful products to me from among thousands of offerings from many lands, I definitely want the goods more than I want the money I pay. I win.
The fact that the store also wins (they want the money more than they want the merchandise) does not make me poorer.
If the store is making "too much money" then another store will pop up down the street and get all the business. In fact, the whole history of human enterprise can be summed up in two words: declining margins. Innovative people and companies figure out how to deliver increasing value for decreasing cost, ramp up volumes as they win in the marketplace, and benefit the rest of society via lower costs. I'd hate to know the gross profit of the little 24-foot wide corner grocery of my childhood compared to the volume providers of today.
And the icing on the cake is, I can be a percentage owner of the store and receive a pro-rata share of the distributed earnings as dividends.
The alternative to running things this way is to have the government run all the stores. Have you ever read of visitors to the US from Russia back in the 1960's, upon seeing one of our supermarkets, not believing it was anything other than a scam showplace set up for the sole purpose of impressing him? That's because people lined up for hours to buy flour and sugar (and look at empty shelves) back home in the USSR.
When you buy food and clothing, you are not providing anything to the store owner. In fact, they are providing you with the goods that you need. You are the recipient of the manufacture, shipping, buying, storing and selling of those good locally.
I agree with the basic sentiment that there is a class of people taking whatever assistance they can get for nothing but meeting some government defined eligibility criteria, but I don't think it's as simple as the above quote.
The retail store owner is at least part recipient of whoever manufactured the goods he is reselling as a middleman; he is also dependent on customers to buy the goods from him, just as the manufacturer is dependent on the retailer to purchase them. This is basically just another way (maybe not perfectly analogous, but similar) of thinking about supply and demand.
What I'm saying is, I don't think anyone is 100% provider or 100% recipient in all circumstances across the board because there are bound to be situations where people have varying degrees of mutually dependence (for instance, Colt would probably not be the same company if it lost its military contracts, so it is a provider it also depends on having a recipient - DOD - and if the recipient were to disappear, then their prominence as a provider would be severely diminished...not to mention the provider Colt depends on to supply materials of which Colt is a recipient). Plus, there is the question of what is being provided: some form of labor, or cash capital?
I bet a nice provider/recipient model could be constructed by someone willing to invest the time in devising one, so that a person or entities net contribution to the financial system could be calculated and assigned a rating. A high rating, say, 100, would be like "the great provider" and 0 would be "total leach".
Given interdependency, I don't see what could actually be a 100 or 0 in all circumstances (maybe like, the sun is 100 compared to earth being 0 in that it provides light and energy without any dependence onthe earth to contribute to the solar system...but the sun is composed of helium etc...it's big regression if you're not careful).
More relevant to the conversation about the economic system, though, there are surely people out there who would score very low on such a scale.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
8,297 posts, read 14,168,495 times
Reputation: 8105
Quote:
Originally Posted by alphamale
I thought it was pretty well laid out.
You are either a provider, or a recipient.
What is so difficult to understand?
Quote:
Originally Posted by GregW
Yeah, 99% provide profits for the 1% recipient class.
Bingo!
The main recipient class is stock investors and bond holders. They get their money from other people's work, they don't themselves work. They do provide a needed way for businesses or govts to expand, but still by and large the wealthy are the recipient class. Generally speaking, they don't work hard and save their pennies to get wealthy, but are born into it.
What we need to do is shift some of the burden from middle and low income workers, and place it where it belongs - the idle but healthy recipient class (as opposed to idle but disabled "welfare" cases, who use fewer resources) but it's hard to say exactly how. Perhaps a larger tax on unearned income would work, especially if given to fund necessary social programs such as universal health care, and also infrastructure improvements. Also we could look to Australia for guidance on increasing the minimum wage to a living wage ..... after all, their economy with its higher wages is booming.
Originally Posted by freemkt low-wage workers provide for the welfare class and the middle class. Tyvm.
Quote:
Originally Posted by scotty011
is that right? Will you please explain just how they do that? This i have to hear. All ears aned waiting.
In the meantime we will be providing for you.:d
I can't speak for freemkt, but I would say that cheap labor provided by low wage workers provides profit margins for business owners (and middle class consumers by keeping prices low) and the taxes low wage workers pay help fund welfare programs for those who don't work at all. That is not a controversial statement, unless we are throwing standard free market economic theory out the window and inventing some sort of new system complete with new definitions.
I agree with the basic sentiment that there is a class of people taking whatever assistance they can get for nothing but meeting some government defined eligibility criteria, but I don't think it's as simple as the above quote.
The retail store owner is at least part recipient of whoever manufactured the goods he is reselling as a middleman; he is also dependent on customers to buy the goods from him, just as the manufacturer is dependent on the retailer to purchase them. This is basically just another way (maybe not perfectly analogous, but similar) of thinking about supply and demand.
What I'm saying is, I don't think anyone is 100% provider or 100% recipient in all circumstances across the board because there are bound to be situations where people have varying degrees of mutually dependence (for instance, Colt would probably not be the same company if it lost its military contracts, so it is a provider it also depends on having a recipient - DOD - and if the recipient were to disappear, then their prominence as a provider would be severely diminished...not to mention the provider Colt depends on to supply materials of which Colt is a recipient). Plus, there is the question of what is being provided: some form of labor, or cash capital?
I bet a nice provider/recipient model could be constructed by someone willing to invest the time in devising one, so that a person or entities net contribution to the financial system could be calculated and assigned a rating. A high rating, say, 100, would be like "the great provider" and 0 would be "total leach".
Given interdependency, I don't see what could actually be a 100 or 0 in all circumstances (maybe like, the sun is 100 compared to earth being 0 in that it provides light and energy without any dependence onthe earth to contribute to the solar system...but the sun is composed of helium etc...it's big regression if you're not careful).
More relevant to the conversation about the economic system, though, there are surely people out there who would score very low on such a scale.
Sylvia, you raise interesting philosophical points about the question.
In the interest of advancing the discussion, I would propose that any transaction that involves a willing buyer and a willing seller doesn't tell us anything about who is a provider and who is a recipient. The can of beans at the cash register in the store is desired by the buyer; the seller wants the money; neither is sacrificing himself for the other or giving anything up. Both win.
In contrast, any transaction that involves force or disallows voluntary action is by definition one between a provider and a recipient. We had no choice when the government took our tax dollars (and government borrowings) to give your neighbor $4500 for a clunker, or bribed your brother-in-law $8500 to buy a home. Or when the food stamps get passed out. Or when special tax breaks are given to some, whether they are electric car subsidies or the home mortgage interest deduction. Or when the local school budget or police department draws from your property taxes.
Please note, I'm not passing judgement (here) on any of these programs--and the examples include things that benefit the haves as well as the have-nots as well as all of society.
I would say that a free society should work to minimize the use of involuntary transactions and force, and leave as much as possible to the realm of citizens making their own decisions as they see fit. Outlawing high deductible health insurance in Obamacare is an example of needless intervention in the lives of citizens; funding good schools is not.
I spend most of my income buying necessities. These necessities are sold at a profit for the owners of the businesses. Therefore I am having a portion of the money I spend transferred from me, a 99%er, to the owning 1%ers. That makes me a provider and them a recipient. Then there is the fact that I pay much of my limited income as taxes whilst multimillionaires pay at a much lower rate on their effectively unlimited income. Thus I am a provider to the government and they are recipients.
I am certain the OP was trying to chastise the poor as “recipients” while “proper” people like him were “providers”. Indeed, he might be a “provider” but the biggest recipients are big business.
The main recipient class is stock investors and bond holders. They get their money from other people's work, they don't themselves work. They do provide a needed way for businesses or govts to expand, but still by and large the wealthy are the recipient class. Generally speaking, they don't work hard and save their pennies to get wealthy, but are born into it.
What we need to do is shift some of the burden from middle and low income workers, and place it where it belongs - the idle but healthy recipient class (as opposed to idle but disabled "welfare" cases, who use fewer resources) but it's hard to say exactly how. Perhaps a larger tax on unearned income would work, especially if given to fund necessary social programs such as universal health care, and also infrastructure improvements. Also we could look to Australia for guidance on increasing the minimum wage to a living wage ..... after all, their economy with its higher wages is booming.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
8,297 posts, read 14,168,495 times
Reputation: 8105
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterboy7375
Do you not have an IRA, a 401K , any investments?
Whether I have them or not isn't the issue - but I'd support a higher tax on unearned income even should I be getting some. There's a price to be paid for living in a decent society. We have a better standard of living in the US than Somalians have, so we have to pay back some of that back into the system. And those who benefit without working for it, should pay more.
- but I'd support a higher tax on unearned income even should I be getting some. .
A simple no would have been ok.
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