quote:

ORIGINAL: tamaka

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

you've yet to articulate how exactly its bad.

You're smarter than i am. Why don't you help me out by telling me how it is good for society?

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

quote:

ORIGINAL: tamaka

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44
you've yet to articulate how exactly its bad.

You're smarter than i am. Why don't you help me out by telling me how it is good for society?

ive already made the assertion that no one's money, yes even the dreaded "1%" sits idle under the beds. their money is invested in ways that causes more wealth to be created for everyone in one capacity or another.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwird


BTW, you missed how I kissed your butt in passing.

You need to learn how to pay better attention in all things, don't be led astray by 'news reports.'

quote:

ORIGINAL: dcnovice

quote:

Those that work there shouldn't work there if the conditions are that bad. And, why haven't those people gotten together to start a company to compete with WalMart? Why are so many people willing to work under such poor conditions?

Obviously, I can't speak for people I don't know, but here are a few hypotheses:
-- Lack of education/skills needed to pursue better opportunities
-- Lack of connections (Personal contacts have gotten me into the door for almost all my jobs.)
-- Lack of savvy to navigate a challenging world
-- Being tethered to a low-opportunity area due to an unsellable house and/or family ties
-- Lack of cash to move elsewhere
Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America offers a fascinating look into the "Walmart world."
https://smile.amazon.com/Nickel-Dimed-Not-Getting-America/dp/0312626681/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483227690&sr=8-1&keywords=nickel+and+dimed

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

quote:

ORIGINAL: tamaka

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

you've yet to articulate how exactly its bad.

You're smarter than i am. Why don't you help me out by telling me how it is good for society?

ive already made the assertion that no one's money, yes even the dreaded "1%" sits idle under the beds. their money is invested in ways that causes more wealth to be created for everyone in one capacity or another.

that said, im not obliged to argue how its good. you made the initial claim as to it being bad, mind you, with no argument or evidence.

you seem almost to have this collectivist notion, which is an idea inimical to the left, that there is a fixed amount of money and if rich person x gets more (than his fair share), he's preventing random person y from doing likewise.

a great number of the "99%" here in America do indeed have "purchasing power." they own cars, homes, appliances, eat well, travel and make investments.

and the poor are better off today than the middle class from a generation or two ago.

"envy" is an ugly vice.

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

quote:

ORIGINAL: tamaka

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

you've yet to articulate how exactly its bad.

You're smarter than i am. Why don't you help me out by telling me how it is good for society?

ive already made the assertion that no one's money, yes even the dreaded "1%" sits idle under the beds. their money is invested in ways that causes more wealth to be created for everyone in one capacity or another.

that said, im not obliged to argue how its good. you made the initial claim as to it being bad, mind you, with no argument or evidence.

you seem almost to have this collectivist notion, which is an idea inimical to the left, that there is a fixed amount of money and if rich person x gets more (than his fair share), he's preventing random person y from doing likewise.

a great number of the "99%" here in America do indeed have "purchasing power." they own cars, homes, appliances, eat well, travel and make investments.

and the poor are better off today than the middle class from a generation or two ago.

"envy" is an ugly vice.

quote:

Millionaires and billionaires. Generally speaking, the most successful among us. The left likes to use the term to denote something evil. Hillary Clinton likes to use the term despite the fact she is a millionaire (yet claims to have been broke in 2001).

“Millionaires and billionaires” joined the lexicon during George W. Bush’s administration. The left used the term to describe recipients of a tax cut Bush championed. That tax cut was across the board for all taxpayers. Since the wealthy pay most of the taxes, yeah, they got the biggest tax cut. If you didn’t pay any taxes, you didn’t get a tax cut. You don’t have to be Phi Beta Kappa to figure that out.

Now Hillary uses the term to describe benefactors of Donald Trump’s tax proposal. She complains Trump would give a tax cut to himself and his millionaire and billionaire friends.

The hidden message here is you are poor because somebody else is rich. It’s the old class warfare card, one of the Democrats’ favorite strategies. Divide and conquer. Rich vs poor, black vs white, man vs woman, etc. Identity politics. Democrats like to put groups of people in boxes and address the boxes separately. They don’t like to treat everyone the same. That’s not fair.

The left wants to use tax laws to punish the rich. Hard work and achievement must be penalized while laziness is rewarded. Democrats strive for “fairness” by demanding more equal outcomes. In other words, shrink the pay gap between CEO’s and cashiers within the same company. Of course the biggest factor in determining outcome is effort, and human nature prevents equal effort. Somehow liberals always manage to miss that point.

Short of stuffing it in their mattress, burying it in the backyard or giving it to government in taxes, whatever millionaires and billionaires do with their money benefits everyone. Buy a yacht and a Gulfstream 6 – blue collar jobs. Put it into banks – money for car loans, mortgages and other types of loans. Invest in Wall Street – capital for companies to expand and create new jobs. Municipal bonds – provides money to government for roads, bridges, convention centers and other public projects. [sound familiar? maybe this author is an "idiot" too??]

None of these are bad. It’s all good. [what?? Enron! dot.com bust! when those and other bad things occurred, the things in the paragraph above must have been lost too! you know, the "in one capacity or another" is really "all of the above."]

It is the folks working in those factories and in those expanding companies. It is the folks buying cars, getting mortgages and starting small businesses. It is the folks building the bridges, highways and convention centers. Union. Non-union. All skin colors. Men and women. All orientations. Everyone benefits because there are millionaires and billionaires. Beware of anyone who tries to convince you otherwise. [sound familiar here too?]

So the next time you hear Hillary or one of her mouthpieces squawking about millionaires and billionaires, implying they are the reason you are not rich, your BS meter should be pegging in the red.

quote:

The fastest way to start a fight in modern Western societies is to mention The One Percent. There inevitably follows a torrent of figures designed to show how the share of income of the richest one percent is growing, while incomes lower down are stagnating or even falling. There is little doubt that the next federal election will be fought over whether the middle class is in terminal decline or holding its own relative to the “rich”.

In honour of the centrality of this issue to Canadian politics my institute held a debate this week on whether Canadians should worry about income inequality. What I learned from listening to the debaters and the questions from the audience, however, is that we should be far more worried by the economic misconceptions that drive so much of the debate.

Let me pick just one egregious example: the idea that the lower your income, the more you spend immediately everything you earn. This is inevitably compared with those one-percenters who, after all, can only buy so many yachts, houses in Bimini and Rolls Royces. The conclusion is obvious: The wealthy are sitting on piles of dead money they cannot possibly consume and the wealth of society would obviously be increased by taking it and transferring it to people who will “spend” it right now.

This, however, is one of the most elementary economic fallacies: that “saving” is fundamentally different from “spending.” After all, what is really being argued is that what is left of the one percenters’ income after they’ve paid for their lavish lifestyle is somehow wasted, as if they were stashing it in gold coins under the mattress. [sound familiar?]

The image may be great for stoking the fires of envy [sound familiar?], but the reality is that well-deployed savings are a huge boon to everyone, and especially to those lower down the income scale. [whaaaat?]

Savings are in fact a particularly fruitful form of spending.

Take Bill Gates, the wealthiest man in the world. What he did with the surplus wealth he and his ideas generated was to build a company that literally transformed the world’s economy, putting ever greater computing and communications power in the hands of an ever-widening circle of people [you know, the "in one capacity or another"]. His company, Microsoft, employs over 100,000 people and makes products consumers value [you know, the "in one capacity or another"]. For this he is richly rewarded and he then deploys the capital he has earned in other investments that create new wealth and economic activity (not to mention spending billions to combat disease in Africa among other things).

Warren Buffett similarly spends his money not only helping to make companies worldwide more profitable through clever management but along the way enriching many people including the 99 percenters whose pension and other investments have risen thanks to Buffett’s expertise or whose job prospects are brighter because he has improved their employers’ future prospects. [say it isn't so!]

Elon Musk is using a fortune made at PayPal to try to create valuable new products in space exploration, electric cars and more. Elizabeth Holmes became a billionaire at 31 by revolutionising blood-testing for all humanity.

According to Forbes magazine, 1,191 of the world’s billionaires are self-made. Only 230 got their money solely through inheritance and unless they deploy that money intelligently and creatively, they will soon fall off the list, as 138 people did between 2014 and 2015. As they say, shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.

Globalisation and technology have allowed people with ideas to bring their innovations to more people than ever before; one consequence is that the fortunes they can amass are larger and arise more quickly than before.

Yet we all benefit [idiot!] from gifted people being able to acquire fortunes through voluntary transaction with consumers who value their ideas and products. Those fortunes allow the creation and distribution of new products and services that could not otherwise exist and in so doing create the jobs, and incomes, of the future [idiot!]. In the process they also often lower the cost of things; [whaaat? no!] that’s why a long distance call that in the 1960s would have cost $30 in today’s money is now essentially free. In 1980 you couldn’t have bought an iPhone at any price; now people at all income levels have them thanks to one percenters. And the one percenters pay lots of taxes too: in the US, they pay more in federal income taxes than the bottom 90 percent. [well now, that doesn't help everyone at all does it?]

The alternative is to allow the state to make the decisions about risk-taking, R&D, new technologies and more. These are the people who can’t run the post office and struggle to maintain the capital investments in infrastructure with which they have already been entrusted.

Those members of the Occupy Movement and their sympathisers who tweet their rage about inequality on their iPhones somehow miss the delicious irony of it all.

Brian Lee Crowley (twitter.com/brianleecrowley) is the Managing Director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an independent non-partisan public policy think tank in Ottawa: www.macdonaldlaurier.ca.[ah, he must be an "idiot" too!]

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

quote:

ORIGINAL: tamaka

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

you've yet to articulate how exactly its bad.

You're smarter than i am. Why don't you help me out by telling me how it is good for society?

ive already made the assertion that no one's money, yes even the dreaded "1%" sits idle under the beds. their money is invested in ways that causes more wealth to be created for everyone in one capacity or another.

that said, im not obliged to argue how its good. you made the initial claim as to it being bad, mind you, with no argument or evidence.

you seem almost to have this collectivist notion, which is an idea inimical to the left, that there is a fixed amount of money and if rich person x gets more (than his fair share), he's preventing random person y from doing likewise.

a great number of the "99%" here in America do indeed have "purchasing power." they own cars, homes, appliances, eat well, travel and make investments.

and the poor are better off today than the middle class from a generation or two ago.

"envy" is an ugly vice.

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

ah, well, yet another presumptuous arrogant pompous mean-spirited ass that I never should have taken off hide.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwird



Nothing more shocking to an academician than original thought, in my experience.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

quote:

ORIGINAL: OsideGirl

quote:

ORIGINAL: tamaka



I think that success should be shared and regulated. Yes i do. Because this system isn't working too well, in my opinion.

So, you think I should bust my ass and then have to give the fruit of my labor to someone else.

Let's say you have a class room where the professor has determined that all test scores will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade. No one would fail and no one would earn an A.

Why would you bother to try to get an A score? You're never going to get the A because it's going to be reduced so that someone who didn't study won't fail.

That is exactly what you're proposing.

And FYI, eventually the entire class will fail because no one will put forth the effort because there is no reward for that effort.

quote:

ORIGINAL: tamaka

I think everyone should share in the success of the country.

You get to share in my success when you've shared by putting something into it.

Surely most all of you people are smarter than this. For example Oside, most if not all of Buffet's $12 billion was capital gains and taxed at 1/2 the rate your income is, even as you bust your ass and make a few 100 thou.....

In fact to give you a prime example, lets say your businesses were a private stock co. (or public) and Buffet bought a bunch of shares.
You bust your ass, work those 60-70 hour weeks or more and kick ass. You and your business make a ton of money and could pay 40% in fed. taxes while Buffet sells his shares and...pays 20% on his 'gains.' Why ?

There simply is no justification for that regardless of what we all might think anyone...is 'supposed' to pay in taxes.

Aside from whatever "shoulds" should be in the US economic/tax system, I actually have little patience for whining over personal struggles at any point of the spectrum. Here's why.

Like it or not (and it's fine to not like it), we live in a capitalist system (with a large dash of socialism added, like all modern countries). That means to get ahead, you'll need to get capital. If you work your ass off but ignore that point, you will always struggle, and know what? It's your own damn fault. Even as a struggling musician (which is how I started), thankfully a financial background impressed upon me the importance of setting aside just a little if that's all I could do, and starting to grow it. To pay a mortgage and build equity instead of paying rent and building someone else's equity.

And to learn to leverage my time. If you're working 9-5 for someone else, it's your own lack of imagination and innovation. Time can be leverage within a job, and time can be leveraged by providing services outside a job. That doesn't mean you don't have to work hard or to put in long hours -- it just means you sever the time = money chain. You can only add so many hours; beyond that, you have to be able to pack larger returns into your time. Whether that's pruning and planning with the 80/20 rule (which I've found to be more like 95/5), or stepping off into entrepreneurship (hell, even the rural 20 year old who pet sits and cleans our house started her own business, and has a staff).

But if you're going to cling to time=money and expecting a big break in a capitalist system without investing at least a small amount of capital (including intellectual capital), then you're simply never going to get ahead, no matter what the system. The problem is you, misapplying an approach that can never work to a problem you misunderstand.

quote:

ORIGINAL: tamaka

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwird


That factory collapse in India with people still working in it has everything to do with Western bitch companies, and not just Walmart.

Some poultry processing place in Hamlet NC in the US locked the fire escape doors because they didn't want people sneaking out for a cigarette. Twenty-five deaths and 55 other casualties later ...

But all we can yell about is "where are the jobs!"

That's another aspect to the very immorality of the corporation...no criminal liability. The corporation is an ethics-free zone because [it] is the most powerful, economic authoritarian institution of a free society.

Talk about dangerous... sounds like a threat to national security to me.

quote:

ORIGINAL: tamaka

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwird

quote:

ORIGINAL: tamaka
And the Walton children did what exactly?

I have some admiration for Sam Walton's initial efforts, but not for how it turned out, or the family, or of ultimate effect on society, but it is still an interesting story how it all came about. The guy almost invented 'monospsony power' all by himself. To give a basic econ intro to the subject (you just can't wait for this one, can you?), 'monopoly power' describes the degree to which one holds all the cards or whatever can be close to it, in having all or most of the market in his possession for that item. Like DeBeers in diamonds, at one time. No one holds absolute monopsony, but if someone says "I will buy 15,000 pair of baby booties and 40,000 child pyjamas and 60,000 cheap sweaters of whatever size, -at my price- " then "If you can't meet that price, I'll find some other factory that will." That is monopsony power. The buyer dictating terms, with the buying power to do so.

The only surprising aspect to the success of Walmart is that nobody was smart enough to copy Walton's business model of taking advantage of cheap Chinese labor. (80%+ of Walmart's inventory is made in China) It simply didn't take any particular brilliance on his part or degrees from Harvard or Wharton to figure that out.

Kmart, (Kresge's) JCPenny, Sears...(Montgomery Ward or Woolworths) all dropped the ball and few can figure out why. In fact, Sears is not long for this world actually having to borrow money from its own management. If that isn't a slap in their corporate face...nothing is. JC Penny may soon be...right behind them.

BTW, what is a monopsony ? Do you mean monopoly ?

Anyone who doesn't think the US government was involved in that deal is a moron.

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

quote:

ORIGINAL: tamaka

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwird

quote:

ORIGINAL: tamaka
And the Walton children did what exactly?

I have some admiration for Sam Walton's initial efforts, but not for how it turned out, or the family, or of ultimate effect on society, but it is still an interesting story how it all came about. The guy almost invented 'monospsony power' all by himself. To give a basic econ intro to the subject (you just can't wait for this one, can you?), 'monopoly power' describes the degree to which one holds all the cards or whatever can be close to it, in having all or most of the market in his possession for that item. Like DeBeers in diamonds, at one time. No one holds absolute monopsony, but if someone says "I will buy 15,000 pair of baby booties and 40,000 child pyjamas and 60,000 cheap sweaters of whatever size, -at my price- " then "If you can't meet that price, I'll find some other factory that will." That is monopsony power. The buyer dictating terms, with the buying power to do so.

The only surprising aspect to the success of Walmart is that nobody was smart enough to copy Walton's business model of taking advantage of cheap Chinese labor. (80%+ of Walmart's inventory is made in China) It simply didn't take any particular brilliance on his part or degrees from Harvard or Wharton to figure that out.

Kmart, (Kresge's) JCPenny, Sears...(Montgomery Ward or Woolworths) all dropped the ball and few can figure out why. In fact, Sears is not long for this world actually having to borrow money from its own management. If that isn't a slap in their corporate face...nothing is. JC Penny may soon be...right behind them.

BTW, what is a monopsony ? Do you mean monopoly ?

Anyone who doesn't think the US government was involved in that deal is a moron.

Explain. What did Walmart do or get from the govt. that the other retailers didn't ?

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

quote:

ORIGINAL: tamaka

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

you've yet to articulate how exactly its bad.

You're smarter than i am. Why don't you help me out by telling me how it is good for society?

ive already made the assertion that no one's money, yes even the dreaded "1%" sits idle under the beds. their money is invested in ways that causes more wealth to be created for everyone in one capacity or another.

that said, im not obliged to argue how its good. you made the initial claim as to it being bad, mind you, with no argument or evidence.

you seem almost to have this collectivist notion, which is an idea inimical to the left, that there is a fixed amount of money and if rich person x gets more (than his fair share), he's preventing random person y from doing likewise.

a great number of the "99%" here in America do indeed have "purchasing power." they own cars, homes, appliances, eat well, travel and make investments.

and the poor are better off today than the middle class from a generation or two ago.

"envy" is an ugly vice.

"An Inconvenient Truth About Millionaires and Billionaires"

quote:

Millionaires and billionaires. Generally speaking, the most successful among us. The left likes to use the term to denote something evil. Hillary Clinton likes to use the term despite the fact she is a millionaire (yet claims to have been broke in 2001).

“Millionaires and billionaires” joined the lexicon during George W. Bush’s administration. The left used the term to describe recipients of a tax cut Bush championed. That tax cut was across the board for all taxpayers. Since the wealthy pay most of the taxes, yeah, they got the biggest tax cut. If you didn’t pay any taxes, you didn’t get a tax cut. You don’t have to be Phi Beta Kappa to figure that out.

Now Hillary uses the term to describe benefactors of Donald Trump’s tax proposal. She complains Trump would give a tax cut to himself and his millionaire and billionaire friends.

The hidden message here is you are poor because somebody else is rich. It’s the old class warfare card, one of the Democrats’ favorite strategies. Divide and conquer. Rich vs poor, black vs white, man vs woman, etc. Identity politics. Democrats like to put groups of people in boxes and address the boxes separately. They don’t like to treat everyone the same. That’s not fair.

The left wants to use tax laws to punish the rich. Hard work and achievement must be penalized while laziness is rewarded. Democrats strive for “fairness” by demanding more equal outcomes. In other words, shrink the pay gap between CEO’s and cashiers within the same company. Of course the biggest factor in determining outcome is effort, and human nature prevents equal effort. Somehow liberals always manage to miss that point.

Short of stuffing it in their mattress, burying it in the backyard or giving it to government in taxes, whatever millionaires and billionaires do with their money benefits everyone. Buy a yacht and a Gulfstream 6 – blue collar jobs. Put it into banks – money for car loans, mortgages and other types of loans. Invest in Wall Street – capital for companies to expand and create new jobs. Municipal bonds – provides money to government for roads, bridges, convention centers and other public projects. [sound familiar? maybe this author is an "idiot" too??]

None of these are bad. It’s all good. [what?? Enron! dot.com bust! when those and other bad things occurred, the things in the paragraph above must have been lost too! you know, the "in one capacity or another" is really "all of the above."]

It is the folks working in those factories and in those expanding companies. It is the folks buying cars, getting mortgages and starting small businesses. It is the folks building the bridges, highways and convention centers. Union. Non-union. All skin colors. Men and women. All orientations. Everyone benefits because there are millionaires and billionaires. Beware of anyone who tries to convince you otherwise. [sound familiar here too?]

So the next time you hear Hillary or one of her mouthpieces squawking about millionaires and billionaires, implying they are the reason you are not rich, your BS meter should be pegging in the red.

http://www.redstate.com/diary/pjensen66/2016/08/26/inconvenient-truth-millionaires-billionaires/

quote:

ORIGINAL: tamaka

[I never said nor implied that person x being a billionaire prevents person y from becoming one.

quote:

I do have an issue with the fact that individuals can accumulate so much wealth... i do think that money is power and i don't think that much power being garnered by unelected people is safe for the nation... or the world for that matter.

quote:

Being able to make demands to replace what you already had (cars, appliances, homes, etc) does not grow demand

quote:

I am not speaking from a point of envy. If you knew me at all you'd actually lol at the idea.