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Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 12:09:15 AM   
BenevolentM


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Status: offline 		Why are so few people wealthy?
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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 12:41:42 AM   
Gauge


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Status: offline 		Because they don't have a lot of money.

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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 12:48:03 AM   
BenevolentM


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Status: offline 		Think of it in terms of compound interest. The world has been around for awhile.

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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 1:24:07 AM   
DaNewAgeViking


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Status: offline 		Daring to treat this topic seriously - the reason so few people have real wealth is that those who do can skew the system in their favor. Low wages, high rents, skewed tax burdens, high costs, job exportation, social isolation - is it any wonder more and more people are slipping into poverty? Go back to the 50s, and you'll see a booming economy with full domestic manufacturing employment and good union wages. Now compare it to today. Quite a difference, eh? For that matter, compare the 50s to Singapore, where the government provides full employment and good living conditions in return for political autonomy. Interesting, no? Our 'government' - that is, the Radicals and their Wall Street masters - do exactly the opposite and still demand political autonomy. So the reason we have so much poverty in this country, at bottom, is we brought it on ourselves by who we elected. Go figure.

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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 2:24:25 AM   
kkaliforniaa


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Status: offline 		But! DaNewAgeViking, how exactly does the public go about changing this? You'd think that changing even a few Senators and Representatives every so often, there would be change for the good, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Now, I'm just theorizing, since I don't follow politics, that every time a person takes office, somehow they become "corrupt", and change doesn't happen.. Plus, it's also a better of two evils. Neither one is going to be any good, what then?

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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 3:39:25 AM   
DaNewAgeViking


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Status: offline 		Well, K, you've put your finger on the dilemma which is destroying this country. You ask 'what is the answer?' There is no answer. You pointed out that everyone who enters office soon becomes corrupted - correction: they were corrupted before they ran for office since they had to sell their souls to the money machine before they could even try to run. As with the economic barricade, the political barricade is well established. The fix is in, and nothing can change that. IF their government (not ours) does anything about present economic or social ills, it will be because they see the advantage in it. All good things come to an end, of course. Considering that the average life expectancy of a representative form of government is 20 years, the 235+ year run of the dear old U S of A is not so much something to be proud of as to be amazed at. My only real hope any more is that it will hold together through my time.

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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 7:01:43 AM   
Zonie63


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quote:

ORIGINAL: BenevolentM

Why are so few people wealthy?


Because there are some people who have no compunction about using conquest, theft, exploitation, murder, and genocide to acquire and keep their wealth. They also don't want to share their wealth or pay any taxes on it - not because they can't afford to, but because it would upset their fragile egos to reduce the gap between rich and the less rich. They seem to feel that if the lives of the "peasants" are elevated even an infinitesimal amount, it will reduce the value of their own lives, and they simply can't have that. If more people were wealthy, it would no longer be quite as special, and the ego trip from being wealthy would be diminished.

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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 7:31:05 AM   
Musicmystery


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quote:

ORIGINAL: BenevolentM

Why are so few people wealthy?

Well first, wealth is pretty common. 2 million more people become millionaires in 2013, and there are nearly 14 million millionaires globally, 4 million of them in the US.

And what is "wealthy"? I think a lot of posters here would feel wealthy without 1 million if they had annual incomes of $100,000 -- and 20% of Americans do. Or even $75,000. And the average US income is $51,000.

But second, it's because people tend to think in terms of dollars per hour, which severely limits their income ceilings, rather than focusing on ideas and service and how to leverage those to create a strong market for their market segment. The Puritan work ethic says "if you didn't sweat, you didn't earn it." So we toil over producing crafts, rather than leverage our talents.

I had someone complain once that his friend wanted to make beautiful hand-carved cutting boards, but he couldn't make a living at it, so doing what you love and earning money was, in his mind, bullshit. I gave this problem to my business class yesterday. After all, how many cutting boards can you make, and at what price? Without turning to mass-production, which wasn't an option in this case, what could he do? What about teaching a class in how to carve these boards? What could he get for that reasonably? I have a friend who collects old barn wood and turns it into high end one of a kind furniture pieces that he sells in Manhattan for thousands each. Could high end art boards sell? For what? How many could he do? How many could he sell -- not many, perhaps, but one a month? And he could still make a few regular boards a week for sale. They came up with a very doable $87,500/year for this guy -- couple boards a week, one high end board a month, a six week once-night-a-week class every two months.

They could have gone further -- record a class and he'd have a DVD he could sell on the Internet -- Say, $30, and with decent marketing -- a Google Ad and a web site, maybe just the videos instead of DVD product -- sold another ... what? 10 a week? 100? 1000? Even ten is an extra $15,000 a year, and he doesn't have to do anything more for it.

He could let his students sell their boards in his store or on his site for a commission -- another income stream, and they don't need to set up separate marketing. He could speak on finding and sharing your life's passion -- another marketing opportunity and income stream. He could write a book about his experiences -- especially good for marketing, and another income stream.

He could partner with other intriguing craftspeople too, for even more opportunities.

But if he does what most people do, he'll live a bitter life, just scraping by, complaining no one appreciates his talents, and that their just aren't good jobs for wood carvers. Or that the economy sucks. Or that government is strangling businesses. Or that big corporations are greedy and unethical. Whine whine whine whine.

That's why.




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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 8:03:14 AM   
GoddessManko


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quote:

ORIGINAL: DaNewAgeViking

Daring to treat this topic seriously - the reason so few people have real wealth is that those who do can skew the system in their favor. Low wages, high rents, skewed tax burdens, high costs, job exportation, social isolation - is it any wonder more and more people are slipping into poverty? Go back to the 50s, and you'll see a booming economy with full domestic manufacturing employment and good union wages. Now compare it to today. Quite a difference, eh? For that matter, compare the 50s to Singapore, where the government provides full employment and good living conditions in return for political autonomy. Interesting, no? Our 'government' - that is, the Radicals and their Wall Street masters - do exactly the opposite and still demand political autonomy. So the reason we have so much poverty in this country, at bottom, is we brought it on ourselves by who we elected. Go figure.



You are very intelligent and you have some knowledge of socioeconomics it seems. You are correct, it actually takes an extreme amount of luck and intuition to choose a niche industry where one can be financially successful and sound, and even then, to where external factors (like increased rents, cost of living) to hinder the growth of your business. There are many reasons why this is the case.
dam smith capitalism for example. for anyone who has read "Wealth of Nations" they'd know our current system is based on the theory that wealth can be created not by the # of resources but # of workers. This is why 86% of resources come from third world countries and 14% from first worlders. Majority of the wealthy by far are through inheritance of some sort. Much like our politicians, many of them children of politicians and people are very aesthetic. They will vote based on name recognition alone our party affiliation without knowing where the politician stands.
The difference between MOST (not all) Democrats and majority of highly intelligent Republicans ( not tea baggers) is Say's law. One is Keynesian and the other is Friedman. If any of you have heard of the Dash equilibrium, this would be of a leftist leaning of economics where the ultra wealthy sacrifice for the sake of the whole and the well being of as many of their fellow man as possible.
A Republican representative on Cspan alternatively has actually said that if gas was raised to $20 a gallon then people will stop buying. This thinking is traditionally Friedman. They are focused in creating long term dramatic shifts in the economic climate where the ultra wealthy are protected and the poorest among us are most vulnerable.
I found Ron Paul most interesting. He wanted to export high paying white collar American jobs to China and warned the US to not start a trade war with China while simultaneously wanting to deport the Mexicans. Now imagine this system, white collar jobs are now gone, and there's no one to pick the strawberries, what jobs are left for Americans? I knew a Dutch-Namibian on Wall St who liked Ron Paul because he believed Americans should stop being so exempt and protected from the laws of free market capitalism with minimum wage laws, unions, etc. Much like many Republicans. In economics there are no right or wrong answers. It is always mind vs heart, all of these men are technically wrong and all are technically correct. It all depends on personal belief.
But I would sum up our system from the Bretton Woods after WWII to our withdrawal via Nixon to NAFTA and rampant deregulation under Bush where we got 100 new billionaires but poverty went up by 18% simultaneously (WEALTH IS ALWAYS EXCHANGED OR ALLOCATED, NOT GAINED OR LOST) in one theory by an economist named Antonio Gramsci, which is cultural hegemony. Although I believe most first worlders including myself benefit from this model and our system is almost perfect.

Communism fails why? I know the answer to that.

The term is "cultural hegemony". Humans are gregarious, they are predictable, they tend to congregate with like minded individuals and will even follow blindly in order to "fit in". They prop themselves up on superficial pedestals for insignificant reasons to feel self important from others and that kind of mindset is easily manipulated with the right kind of stimuli (Media/propaganda...what have you). Gender, race, country of origin, eye color, religion etc. The more people are divided, the easier they are to control.

Wiki explanation
In Marxist philosophy, the term Cultural hegemony describes the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of that society — the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, and mores — so that their ruling-class worldview becomes the worldview that is imposed and accepted as the cultural norm; as the universally valid dominant ideology that justifies the social, political, and economic status quo as natural, inevitable, perpetual and beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class.
Millionaires are technically common, but still less than 2% of the US population and the #1 cause of bankruptcy pre-"Obamacare" was an illness. And most of those people had health insurance.

The past 30 years, looking at microeconomics for a moment, wages have stagnated, the bridge blue collar jobs that usually took no collar to white collar are gone, the options for the poor are fewer than ever before. Now why is it things remain the same despite Congress having 20 term politicians who have kept enabling this. Because unfortunately, not one media outlet ever brings up voting numbers. They LOVE scapegoating politicians on this side or the other and pandering to the public though. Wonder why.
And by the way, not voting is a statement. APATHY.

< Message edited by GoddessManko -- 8/29/2014 8:08:09 AM >

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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 8:23:36 AM   
Musicmystery


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quote:

The difference between MOST (not all) Democrats and majority of highly intelligent Republicans ( not tea baggers) is Say's law. One is Keynesian and the other is Friedman.


Ah...no. Yes, Say's law is the basis of supply-side economics, and yes, Republicans (until the teas) based economic policy upon it (starting with Reagan in particular). And demonstrated repeated that trickle-down doesn't work, but doubled down on it anyway, especially under Bush II, because it benefits the top economy--their financial supporters.

But Friedman's primary principle is that inflation is always a monetary phenomenon. It has nothing to do with Say.

Friedman didn't even agree with the supply-sider's claims, pointing out that their tax-cutting strategy would merely ramp up deficits to "intolerable" levels. His interest, rather, was in denying government dollars to spend (ignoring the continual borrowing strategy to close the gap followed since Reagan).
quote:


In 2003, Alan Murray, who at the time was Washington bureau chief for CNBC and a co-host of the television program Capital Report, declared the debate over supply-side economics to have ended "with a whimper" after extensive modeling performed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted that the revenue generating effects of the specific tax cuts examined would be, in his words, "relatively small."[29] Murray also suggested that Dan Crippen may have lost his chance at reappointment as head of the CBO over the dynamic scoring issue.
Tax decreases on high income earners (top 10%) are not correlated with employment growth, however, tax decreases on lower income earners (bottom 90%) are correlated with employment growth.[44]

Before President Bush signed the 2003 tax cuts, the liberal Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released a statement signed by ten Nobel prize laureates entitled "Economists' statement opposing the Bush tax cuts", which states that:

Passing these tax cuts will worsen the long-term budget outlook, adding to the nation’s projected chronic deficits. This fiscal deterioration will reduce the capacity of the government to finance Social Security and Medicare benefits as well as investments in schools, health, infrastructure, and basic research. Moreover, the proposed tax cuts will generate further inequalities in after-tax income.[45]

Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman agreed the tax cuts would reduce tax revenues and result in intolerable deficits, though he supported them as a means to restrain federal spending.[46] Friedman characterized the reduced government tax revenue as "cutting their allowance".
Bush tax cuts

Later analysis of the Bush tax cuts by the Economic Policy Institute claims that the Bush tax cuts have failed to promote growth, as all macroeconomic growth indicators, save the housing market, were well below average for the 2001 to 2005 business cycle. These critics argue that the Bush tax cuts have done little more than deprive government of revenue, and increase deficit and after-tax income inequality.[47]

In the two years since that report, though, growth has remained strong, and newer numbers dispute the conclusions of the EPI report. The Bush administration points to the long period of sustained growth, both in GDP and in overall job numbers, as well as increases in personal income and decreases in the government deficit.[48] However, the claims by the Bush administration were made prior to the onset of the 2008 financial crisis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply-side_economics

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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 8:33:31 AM   
cloudboy


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Status: offline 		(1) Most people lack capital.

(2) Upward mobility in the USA is highly restricted for children born into poverty or low-income homes.

(3) Politics. Robert Reich and Joseph Stiglitz have argued that we're living in a second guilded age of highly skewed wealth distribution --- and this has come about because of our tax policies and lack of investment in training the US workforce.

Item #3 greatly impacts items (1) and (2).

Events in Ferguson aren't just about a shooting..... and if the income inequality skews even worse, then the masses will grow even more unruly about it.

P.S. This ^^^ (2) and (3) are more about the middle class whereas (1) is more central to the OP.

< Message edited by cloudboy -- 8/29/2014 9:12:19 AM >

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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 8:39:55 AM   
GoddessManko


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

But Friedman's primary principle is that inflation is always a monetary phenomenon. It has nothing to do with Say.



Your claim is extremely incorrect. "Keynes vs Friedman" is a very common economic debate that refers to Say's law, not inflation. Inflation is inevitable regardless of whether you are Keynesian or Friedman. It's like saying his economic theory is based on MONEY.


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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 8:56:53 AM   
Musicmystery


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Status: offline 		Sorry, but the fault is yours.

"Inflation is always a monetary phenomenon" is the central tenet of Friedman's work. You can disagree with him if you like, but it's still his position. And it's why his economic philosophy is called Monetarism.



He does differ from Keynes, certainly. But the demand-side/supply-side based on Say's is not Friedman's stance.

I even showed you, with linked support, where Friedman criticized the supply-siders. You ignored it, based only on your mistaken belief.

Friedman, in fact, is well-known for breaking with the Chicago school and putting monetary policy above fiscal policy in impact.

It was Laffer who really pushed the supply-side into politics. And yes, they too counter Keynes.

But you're just going to have to wrap your head around the fact that two schools of thought disagreed with Keynes, and for different reasons.

And not because I think so, but because that's the central positions of their economic philosophies, as I've already demonstrated.

So insist away. But you're incorrect.

Now, there could arguable be a bridge from Say to Friedman in monetary policy, that if the money supply is expanded, demand will increase in terms of prices to pull up the slack -- MV = PQ -- unless demand is also stimulated. But in terms of goods, Friedman's formula reveals the faults in Say's Law -- that merely supplying more funds will lead not to greater demand, but to greater inflation.

The factors creating greater demand are then separate, and may or may not happen concurrently.

That doesn't make Keynes right either, but in fairness to Keynes, his economic philosophy has never been fully implemented. Both liberals and conservatives love to push expansionary policy -- whether increased spending or tax cuts, but hate to pursue contractionary policy in good times. In fact, our deficits were made worse by pursuing expansionary policies in good times, exactly when Keynes would have argued for contracting the economy, which would have left us in a much stronger position when the downturns came.

Unfortunately, the Bush II administration kept buying us out downturns with monetary policy (letting the Fed solve it), while doing little/nothing to correct the fiscal problems responsible. When interest rates hit bottom -- the fiscal shit hit the fan.

< Message edited by Musicmystery -- 8/29/2014 9:04:48 AM >

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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 9:07:45 AM   
GoddessManko


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From: Dante's Inferno
Status: offline 		FR because this is the most ridiculous argument ever posed to me based on a snippet of my post. Aquote is just a one liner of a man's entire life. Is there a mention of his opposing inflation anywhere therein here, actually quite the opposite;
Milton Friedman (July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist, statistician, and writer who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades. He was a recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, and is known for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and the complexity of stabilization policy.[1] As a leader of the Chicago school of economics, he profoundly influenced the research agenda of the economics profession. A survey of economists ranked Friedman as the second most popular economist of the twentieth century after John Maynard Keynes,[2] and The Economist described him as "the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century ... possibly of all of it."[3]

Friedman's challenges to what he later called "naive Keynesian" (as opposed to New Keynesian) theory[4] began with his 1950s reinterpretation of the consumption function, and he became the main advocate opposing activist Keynesian government policies.[5] In the late 1960s, he described his own approach (along with all of mainstream economics) as using "Keynesian language and apparatus" yet rejecting its "initial" conclusions.[6]

During the 1960s, he promoted an alternative macroeconomic policy known as "monetarism". He theorized there existed a "natural" rate of unemployment and argued that governments could increase employment above this rate, e.g., by increasing aggregate demand, only at the risk of causing inflation to accelerate.[7] He argued that the Phillips curve was not stable and predicted what would come to be known as stagflation.[8] Though opposed to the existence of the Federal Reserve System, Friedman argued that, given that it does exist, a steady, small expansion of the money supply was the only wise policy.[9]

Friedman was an economic adviser to Republican U.S. President Ronald Reagan. His political philosophy extolled the virtues of a free market economic system with minimal intervention. He once stated that his role in eliminating U.S. conscription was his proudest accomplishment, and his support for school choice led him to found the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman advocated policies such as a volunteer military, freely floating exchange rates, abolition of medical licenses, a negative income tax, and school vouchers.[10] His ideas concerning monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation influenced government policies, especially during the 1980s. His monetary theory influenced the Federal Reserve's response to the global financial crisis of 2007–08.[11] In the field of statistics, Friedman developed the sequential sampling method of analysis.

Milton Friedman's works include many monographs, books, scholarly articles, papers, magazine columns, television programs, videos, and lectures, and cover a broad range of topics of microeconomics, macroeconomics, economic history, and public policy issues. His books and essays were widely read, and have had an international influence, including in former Communist states.



< Message edited by GoddessManko -- 8/29/2014 9:08:49 AM >

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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 9:09:59 AM   
Musicmystery


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Status: offline 		And NONE of that counters what I've told you nor supports what you have claimed.

Read it. NONE of it supports your arguments.

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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 11:18:11 AM   
DaNewAgeViking


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Status: offline 		Take a look at this, then:

http://money.msn.com/investing/post--sorry-but-labor-day-is-a-joke

It seems even Wall Street agrees with my original posting. Fancy that.

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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 12:17:51 PM   
BenevolentM


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Status: offline 		If you are making $100,000 USD a year, you are among the poor. There aren't many people making more than this. You need a lot more than a million dollars to be wealthy. You need at least $100,000,000 USD in order to be considered wealthy. Under that you are considered as having more money than most people which isn't saying much. How many servants can you employ on a full time basis? Typically, servants are rented because few people have enough money to employ anyone full time. Professionals are servants. If you feel that professionals are not servants, it means that you are poor. If you don't have enough money to employ people on a full time basis from your personal assets, not the business assets, you are poor.

Why is this important? It is a measure of your capacity to be generous. If means you cannot be there for others in a substantive way. Your generosity by necessity is phony because it is like giving a man who is starving a dollar. Now if a thousand people give him a dollar, he would have a thousand dollars which may be enough to buy groceries for a couple of months if he has dependents, but the needy are not 0.1 percent of the population. They are far more numerous. Poverty clearly exists because there isn't enough money to go around. But it doesn't stop at groceries. There is rent and utilities. There is gasoline, automobile repairs, insurance so on and so on. You only fed the man and his small family. Your task isn't yet complete.

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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 12:34:49 PM   
BenevolentM


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Status: offline 		If you are making $100,000 USD a year, I concede that it is likely that you are making enough money to feed yourself, but can you feed others? You say you give to charities who help feed people in third world countries. Why are you helping to feed people in third world countries? Because you cannot afford to do it. What money you have is going to put your kid through college so that he or she will earn at least as much as you do. After all the expenses what do you have left?

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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 1:36:49 PM   
BenevolentM


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Status: offline 		Wealth likely follows a logarithmic trajectory; it is the number of zeros in your pay. Why? If you live in a village in Kenya where the floors are dirt floors, no one expects you to own a car and the village is not designed with automobiles in mind and girls won't shun you for not having an automobile. In many regards you are no better off than the person who rides to work on a bicycle. This is the red queen effect. The first world country will have this amazing GDP, but in real terms won't put them as far ahead as you might think. Poverty is efficient. Wealth is inefficient. If you raise the standard of living of everyone, society will be less efficient for it. How many calories must you consume? How much petroleum, steel, etc. It goes up exponentially. So what you are actually getting is the exponent. In other words, the relationship is logarithmic. If a few people make it out of poverty, it isn't a problem. If a lot of people do, it's a problem.

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RE: Why are so few people wealthy? - 8/29/2014 1:37:52 PM   
BenevolentM


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Status: offline 		In other words trying to understand this problem is like trying to wrap your head around global warming.

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