Quote:
Originally Posted by marlinfshr
I disagree as I have made a comfortable living working on sportfishing yachts for years. And I am only one.
Exactly what is wrong with some rich guy ordering a 4 million dollar yacht (or more)?
That order puts a local boat building company to work (small business)
A couple dozen local laborors are hired for the year or 2 it will take.
The local diesel service center (small business) then sends several employees to work installing the motors
the local electronics store (small business) then sends installers for the electronics
local machine shop custom makes shafts, rudders and turns wheels to spec (small business)
another small business is hired to make the tower
then there are the chairs
then the teak installation
Tackle shop gets thousands of dollars of tackle ordered
Captain gets hired
At least one mate (probably 2 now) gets hired
bait catchers several states away start getting orders for bait
Marina rents out slip, giving a reason to keep dock hands, management, etc employed
Boat needs to be maintained so bottom gets painted yearly, putting several people to work
diver periodically gets used to clean bottom, change out wheels,
yard workers stay employed as somebody needs to operate lift and set blocks when boat is hauled
restaurants and bar get business from crew, clients and owners, usually leaving good tips to the servers
bands are hired to play the bar on weekends
The list goes on and on and on. Isn't materialism and capitalism great. Look at all those small businesses and people getting employed both directly and indirectly because some rich guy wants a boat to show off to his friends and entertain clients with while fishing!
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You are basically falling for the old "Broken-window fallacy". Which was explained in Frederic Bastiat's "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen"
That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen; by Frederic Bastiat
It is true that the buying of a yacht creates demand for many workers. And it is also true that someone breaking a window creates demand for a new window. The new window gives work to the glass-maker. And now that the glass-maker has money in his pocket, he can then spend it buying goods/services from someone else, which puts money in their pocket, and so on and so forth.
In this sense, one could argue that breaking windows is actually a social-good, because it provides people work. Right?
Wrong. Because running around breaking windows doesn't actually make "society", on-net, any richer. It benefits some at the expense of others. And further, it presumes that the man who was forced to buy the window, wouldn't have spent his money somewhere else, for something he actually wanted.
In a hypothetical-situation, let us pretend that you literally had a money-machine in your living-room, and you could just print up money at will. You could then create a near-infinite number of "job". You could hire the neighborhood kids to mow your lawn, rake your leaves. You could buy cars, houses, anything. But does printing money and buying stuff with it actually make "society" better off? It would give people work I suppose, and it could definitely benefit some more than others, but no, it doesn't make society, on-net, any better off.
Creating jobs for the sake of creating jobs is stupid. The government could tax people and then spend the money buying things to put people to work, but does that make people better off?
What I'm trying to explain to you is, the idea behind the whole "trickle-down" concept, is just a neo-liberal economic system driven by international finance, which employs various schemes to create perpetual asset-bubbles, which itself creates "wealth on paper". Through these schemes, the stock-market can double in value while the "bottom 99%" are either no better off, or worse off.
But when the stock-market doubles in value, it means "trillions of dollars" are created, which gives these billionaires all this money to buy multi-million dollar yachts, and which certainly puts people to work. But creating asset-bubbles through quantitative-easing, and near-zero percent interest rates from the Federal Reserve, as well as government guarantees/protections, doesn't necessarily make society better-off.
Does a system which basically creates trillions of dollar of "fictitious capital" at the top, so rich people can put poor people to work building them yachts, which even with the money they get, they can still barely afford to pay their rent, since property values have skyrocketed, making everything completely unaffordable, really make society better-off? Is that the most-efficient use of resources/labor/etc?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_capital
As I said, there are geopolitical reasons, as well as domestic reasons for why international finance has taken over everything. In short, being able to create money, and perpetually-inflate asset bubbles is useful. And since these stocks are traded internationally, it anchors investors from around the world to the same system. And since it is the money(IE the elites) who have the power in every country. If you can keep the elites happy, your government will be stable, and the leaders can stay in power forever. If you upset the elites, you're as good as dead.
Regardless, the whole thing is rather perverse. But since most people have no clue how the system actually works, all they can see is the broken-window being fixed, and they are too dense to understand why that isn't a good thing. So they talk like you, and imagine that they've figured it out. Assured of their own correctness.
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