Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Somebody read Limbaugh letter 101 and thinks they are an economics genius all of a sudden.
Yep I was listening to Limbaugh around 2001-2003. Then he was saying the Reagan tax cuts of the 80s were responsible for the big time economic boom times well even into the 2000s and GW Bush SHOULD do more of them and they'll help for many years.. Well 2007-09 happened and the stock market crash.. How come I never hear conservatives on this topic and most ignore the Bush recession he caused with his 2 wars and tax cuts era?
The oil industry provides some illuminating terminology. They like to say "oil production" when they don't make oil. They only extract it from the ground. Most of it is converted to fuel then burned, and then that wealth is gone forever, while the pollution stays for at least a millennium.
How the economy works can be summarized like this:
If you produce more than you consume, you can gain wealth, and you gain exponentially more if you invest your surplus production. If you consume as much or more than you produce, you don't gain wealth.
A direct consequence of this fact is the fact that welfare payments are money down the drain. If you redistribute money from a producer to a consumer, it leads to less production and more consumption. Any of society's "consumers" could already become producers if they simply consumed less (And this would grow the economy overall because surplus production would be invested into creating more production).
Case in point: The most popular automobile brands for millionaires are Honda, Toyota and Ford.
If you gain wealth, and you stick that in a savings account or use it to buy property, it just sits there. If you give it to a poor person in the form of a welfare payment, that person will spend every cent, and it will come back to the producer in a virtuous cycle that stimulates the economy.
I'm not commenting on the propriety or morality of wealth distribution. I'm just disputing your statement that welfare payments are "money down the drain".
Unskilled labor is easily replaced, at little to no cost. Location, buildings, machines, offices, raw materials are not easily replaced, and very expensive. So people can argue all they want about these pie in the sky notions about labor, but the reality is that if you do a job that anyone could basically walk off the street and do, your labor will be valued less, as it should be. It requires a lot more discipline to save the money required to own the production line.
The crux of the issue is that even once you get skilled the gap between your pay and the price of productive real estate would cost you a life time to attain.
That is why socialism is taking root, the disparity does not just apply to unskilled labor.
The crux of the issue is that even once you get skilled the gap between your pay and the price of productive real estate would cost you a life time to attain.
That is what debt is for. I worked very hard my whole life to have a career that earned enough to give me more opportunities. I took out very large loans, in order to invest in things that would make me more money. That is what got me out of the upper middle class where many of my colleagues still remain. But nobody is going to lend someone making $60K a year, very much money, which is why hard work is necessary before getting to that point.
To this day, I still work 80 hours a week, even though I dont need to work at all, because that is the way I’m built. And that is why I am a conservative. Because I have first hand experience in watching the government take more of my money, the more I work. If I only worked 40 hours a week, the government would have taken a smaller percentage of my earnings, and that has always seemed very wrong to me.
Being 50 years old, I’m sure one day, in the not too distant future, I will slow down and I will be living off mostly capital gains, so I guess there is a light at the end of the tax tunnel. That is, unless too many liberals get elected into office and they start raising those taxes, because, God forbid they let people enjoy the money they worked so hard for their entire lives and invested wisely, instead of buying every flashy new depreciating toy that came along.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pittsflyer
That is why socialism is taking root, the disparity does not just apply to unskilled labor.
Young people are embracing socialism because they dont want to work the way their parents did. Which would be fine, except for the fact that they want other people to support their “work-life balance” for them.
That, coupled with the fact that they didn't live through the Cold War, and the miserable failure that socialism was. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, where people had to stand on lines 3 blocks long for a roll of toilet paper or a tube of toothpaste. They never got to see China as a dirt poor 3rd world communist country before they allowed capitalism transform them into the economic powerhouse they are today.
Young people are embracing alternatives to our current system because our current system is screwing them over for life.
Today’s young people will spend the rest of their lives in debt slavery because of astronomical education and housing costs. The federal Reserve’s zero-interest rate policy is massively inflating asset values, which causes a transfer of wealth from the young to the old.
The baby boomers have spent their entire lives stealing from future generations, and it won’t stop until the baby boomers die.
It shouldn’t be surprising that today’s young people want a different system. They have nothing left to lose.
Young people are embracing alternatives to our current system because our current system is screwing them over for life.
Today’s young people will spend the rest of their lives in debt slavery because of astronomical education and housing costs. The federal Reserve’s zero-interest rate policy is massively inflating asset values, which causes a transfer of wealth from the young to the old.
The baby boomers have spent their entire lives stealing from future generations, and it won’t stop until the baby boomers die.
It shouldn’t be surprising that today’s young people want a different system. They have nothing left to lose.
This Boomer will leave an S-load for his millennials. lol
That is what debt is for. I worked very hard my whole life to have a career that earned enough to give me more opportunities. I took out very large loans, in order to invest in things that would make me more money. That is what got me out of the upper middle class where many of my colleagues still remain. But nobody is going to lend someone making $60K a year, very much money, which is why hard work is necessary before getting to that point.
To this day, I still work 80 hours a week, even though I dont need to work at all, because that is the way I’m built. And that is why I am a conservative. Because I have first hand experience in watching the government take more of my money, the more I work. If I only worked 40 hours a week, the government would have taken a smaller percentage of my earnings, and that has always seemed very wrong to me.
Being 50 years old, I’m sure one day, in the not too distant future, I will slow down and I will be living off mostly capital gains, so I guess there is a light at the end of the tax tunnel. That is, unless too many liberals get elected into office and they start raising those taxes, because, God forbid they let people enjoy the money they worked so hard for their entire lives and invested wisely, instead of buying every flashy new depreciating toy that came along.
Young people are embracing socialism because they dont want to work the way their parents did. Which would be fine, except for the fact that they want other people to support their “work-life balance” for them.
That, coupled with the fact that they didn't live through the Cold War, and the miserable failure that socialism was. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, where people had to stand on lines 3 blocks long for a roll of toilet paper or a tube of toothpaste. They never got to see China as a dirt poor 3rd world communist country before they allowed capitalism to transform them into the economic powerhouse they are today.
The soviet union was a dictatorship. So you think its good that we are encouraging MASSIVE debt spending in both national and personal situations (you saw how that worked out in 08) just to get a tiny plot of productive land that you have to work 50 years for to enjoy just a few years before you die? I think many would disagree with you which is why they want to use political force to put McJob creators in their place.
Thats the thing, wealth can be created without this massive debt spending and toiling for peanuts. This is an artificial system set up by the rich. What makes said a piece of land or strip mall worth X what makes my SKILLED labor worth Y
And thats if your not a physisist working for uber
Also its not the hours you put in its what you put into those hours ... the issue is you have to be getting the full value of that work, if you are getting a tiny percentage because thats all thats on offer then you will get political blow back. People are not willingly going to agree to slavery.
One of the better threads I've seen on P&OC. Looks like it may devolve into the usual "USA is becoming a communist state" nonsense, but some interesting ideas getting posted along the way.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
