2012 Republican Presidential Candidate Race

[Milkster]

Oh GOP, how silly you are. Too bad Obama has this in the bag and not a single candidate will be strong enough to call him on his bullshit but the time the election comes around.

[Mazmaz]

You sure?

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

Archi, or probably Rkenshin, what's wrong with this graph? http://blog.american.com/2011/11/inc...all-the-money/

And please ignore the silly "the rich stole all the money" caricature.

Also, I think people need to quit calling tax handouts "loopholes". "Loophole" implies some accident on the part of politicians, or that some tricky tax lawyer was able to game the system, etc. No, they aren't loopholes, they're just handouts. They were intentionally put there. I think politicians want people to think of them as loopholes b/c it gives them an issue to run on, and more importantly, people don't blame the politicians themselves.

[archibaldcrane]

I agree with the loophole definition thing, it's incredibly disingenuous.

Regarding the graph - dude's all over the place - "bottom 99%", "the middle class" etc - if you keep shifting the affect population, yeah the results are going to vary.

But if you're looking for me to say "no but he's using the wrong inflation index" or "his analysis of household size and its affects on median income are flawed" - yeah I'm not going to be able to do that.

[Dimmauk]

Al Gore was supposedly a robot, but Romney is just as emotionless. So why are Republicans voting for a robot?

[Cail]

http://news.yahoo.com/colbert-preps-...020429243.html

Colbert/Stewart 2012.

[Dantrag]

They were saying that he would have 5% of the vote in SC.


Huntsman has 4% in SC..


lol

[pohibaba]

Is South Carolina an open primary or can only Republicans vote in it? There's no way that Republican voters could actually vote for Colbert, is there?

[Karasu]

Is South Carolina an open primary or can only Republicans vote in it? There's no way that Republican voters could actually vote for Colbert, is there?

It is an open primary, but I don't think it matters. SC doesn't allow write in votes in the primary, and the deadline to get on the ballot was back in November. So I dunno what Colbert is up to.

[Mazmaz]

I think it's a ploy to spread awareness about PACs and whatnot. It'd be kickass if he got in on one of the debates.

[Ragnus]

If anything just to see a shred of Intelligence shine through from someone even if he's playing up a staunch Conservative acting role.

Hell, Mitt might be able to take a note or two on how to fake it convincingly.

[Gwynplaine]

gwyn's questions are designed to start arguments over definitions and don't serve any purpose to the discussion.

Unless there's clarification and some kind of understanding on definitions then communicating and arguing is pointless. You can't comprehend and decide to sign a contract if the terms and definitions aren't clear. You can't solve a math problem if the types of numbers are undefined and unclear. Communicating and thinking are no different and just as important.

I acknowledge that this is not the topic of this thread. However it pops up in just about every news thread. So if I'm going to exert some kind of effort to reply with my thoughts then it might as well be here. This post is extremely long, but nothing less is a suitable answer. Thanks to anyone who is patient, honest, or curious enough to read the whole thing.


What is Wealth? What does it do?
In casual usage, wealth is something like: all property that has a money value or an exchangeable value.

In economics wealth is manmade material goods. That is distinguished from money, which is the store of value used in the transaction of the goods. And that is in contrast to what economists call "free goods", which are automatic non-manmade things that can be valuable like air, wind, or rain.

Wealth is not a "free good" like air, wind, or rain that just exists disembodied somewhere "out there" in the world. It is not a finite natural resource. That is the "pie" view of money and wealth; that there is X amount to go around. Which implies some people just sort of wind up with it, and it's unfair so the proper thing to do is to let people with less to have more.

Wealth is *created*. It is created by trading, exchanging values for values, and by increasing efficiency and productivity via existing wealth. The money that you earn and the wealth you accumulate is literally yours. It is not just a resource that has sloshed ephemerally into your life before returning into the big pool of money and wealth resources out in the world somewhere. That money and wealth wouldn't be possible without you, just as the money and wealth created by Steve Jobs or anyone else wouldn't be possible without them. That wealth would not have existed without the particular person using their mind and effort to produce.

(*money is a dicey and confusing word to throw in here because of the fact we use fiat money, but I'm doing it for the fact most people think of wealth in terms of money, but it's not the right term to use in economics)


The implied view held by most people of the wealthy is that they walk around with wads of cash in their pockets, or bulging out of their mattresses; that they swim around in giant bank vaults of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck. While not doing any productive work, just hoarding money for it's own sake, spending indulgently, and snorting coke off a hooker's ass.

This is the fantasy cartoon, MTV Cribs view of the wealthy. Ironically and hypocritically it is also the view held by the people who are envious of wealth themselves. They secretly (or openly) wish they could just be granted a ton of money so they can quit their job, kick back, and cruise on their cash.

I believe it was a wise man named the Notorious B.I.G. who once said "mo' money, mo' problems". And in a number of ways he was completely right. Having money inherits the challenge and responsibility of what to do with it. If you were somehow magically granted $500 million tomorrow what would you do with it? Pretend it is a dead-serious fact that suddenly you have and are responsible for $500 million. What should you do? Will the things you do ensure you have any money left 10 years from now? How do you know you're using it in the best way possible? How do you protect from being bilked and cheated? Should you invest in Amway, or Solyndra, or Pixar?

The biggest question of all is, what do you do with your dormant money that you can't use at that very moment? It's wasteful and stupid to let it sit under a mattress or do nothing at all. If it is invested correctly your money and wealth could be used to earn further wealth. And that is what most wealthy people do.

The loans and capitol that a local small business needed to open was made possible because of savings in the form of invested wealth. That money was no use lying dormant so instead it is invested into the world to produce, to create, to make the world more efficient and valuable and hence earn more wealth. As are many such loans and investments.

Wealth is good. The more wealth people in a society own, the better off the society. The products and technologies some take for granted wouldn't have been possible without savings, wealth, and the deployment of that wealth to earn more wealth. The video games, smart phones, satellite and GPS, the computers you use so gratuitously. These are indirect benefits you reap by living in a society that enables people who know how to manage wealth to accumulate it. Increasing wealth and productive investment is the basis for economic gains and expectations that the future will be better and more high tech than the past. Without them you have economic stagnation, technological reversal, and subsistence living.


Classism and Failing to Distinguish between Productive and Unproductive Wealthy
Now go back to the problem of how to handle a great amount of money or wealth. Isn't there some truth to the notion there are wealthy people who use money irresponsibly? Yes, any person can either spend in a way that depletes their wealth or in a way that produces more wealth.

Applying Henry Hazlitt's famous economic lesson, you have to look at the short term and long term. There was a popular term in early America, "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations". What that means is that a family that became wealthy could rise up from the lower class, earn a lot of wealth, and subsequently lose it all and return to how they started in only three generations. That is the result of using saved wealth in such a way that it is depleting.

Those wealthy types are your M.C. Hammer's, your Vanilla Ice, your splurging rapper on MTV Cribs who owns 20 cars with an XBox and gold plated pimp cups. They are the real estate investors who became haughty and laughed at anyone who told them real estate prices can't increase forever. (Although there's not anything inherently wrong with using up your wealth if that's what you know you want to do)

To *keep* and *increase* wealth is challenging hard work. It requires knowledge and constant vigilance. In a Capitalist system the 1% are the wealthy that are capable of managing their wealth in such a way that they keep it, and increase it by deploying it for productive economic use. They are the *long-term* wealthy. The coke snorting MTV Cribs wealthy are the *short-term* wealthy who will be back to shirtsleeves in due course. The types who became wealthy due to random chance, luck, or fads. Observe that people who win the lottery very rarely still have any great amount of money in the long-term. They either fail to know how or don't care to use their wealth productively.


I'll make a point to say that I'm not making a materialist argument. I don't mean that people with money are *inherently* good and people without money are *inherently* bad. No one has a duty to make it their life's goal to accumulate wealth and spend years learning how to properly invest and productively use it. That's up to your personal choice and values. My point is that the people who *do choose to do so* should be respected for their knowledge and work not vilified and threatened by mobs who want to forcibly steal what they brought into existence.

And so "income inequality" is good and proper. Just as "height inequality", "eye color inequality", "violin playing inequality", or "math skills inequality" are a metaphysical fact. People are as a hard fact *not* equal in knowledge or ability and no amount of laws, or illiterate opinions of a 99% changes that fact. And so "income equality" is an evil and impossible goal. To the extent it could be practiced is the extent to which economic activity stopped functioning and everyone reverted to miserable subsistence living.



Half-Truths and Legitimate Grievances
No complete lie or falsehood can live for very long. It's much easier to use half-truths and mixed cases that pray upon confusion and lack of clarity. That's the case that makes it possible for some regular everyday lower and middle class people to confuse "income equality" and O.W.S. for something that it isn't. The same half-truth is what gives egalitarianism it's foot in the door.

It is true that all people should be granted equal basic individual rights, and equality before the law. But equality in physical material fact, income, identity and possessions is impossible and therefore wrong, with bad results.

The truth is that banks and people who make bad investments and decisions about using their wealth should not be bailed out with other people's money. Privatizing the profits and socializing the losses. It is unjust to lower and middle class people and it is unjust to the wealthy who would benefit from deploying their wealth for productive uses. Now instead the people who used it unproductively are rewarded, and the people who used it productively are penalized.

It's crucial to differentiate between wealthy people who make sound economically productive investments, and the schmoozing politically connected wealthy who get government protection. Instead "the 1%" are lumped together which is classism. Classism is as bad as any other condemnation of a group of people based on a superficial characteristic. Just like racism or sexism. There are good wealthy people, and bad.

The genuine problem is our mixed economy that allows the state to sanction the bad and keep them in their positions. Our mixed economy is a mixture of Capitalism and Socialism. A mixing of free markets with statist control. And it is the Socialism that should be opposed. In a Capitalist system the state doesn't get to pick who wins and gets bailed out. The wealthy who made bad unproductive choices deplete their wealth and the good productive investments benefit with increased wealth. But OWS and the "99%" don't advocate such an idea. They have no problems with bailouts to car companies, or Solyndra, or for themselves. They are hypocrites who only oppose bailouts for particular people who have more than they do.


Another injustice caused by the Socialist aspect of a mixed economy is fiat money and the Federal Reserve. By printing "money" on whim to bailout unproductive companies everyone's money is worth less. It is true that lower and middle class people can't get ahead in this mixed economy thanks in part to inflation caused by printing money. But once again OWS is on the wrong side of the problem.


What's more is that while "the 99%" and OWS supporters pretend to be anti-establishment, they in fact cause, support, and perpetuate the means of establishing and enshrining it to begin with. With sanctioning by government, lobbying, and political pull the wealthy and large companies are already established in their industry. This is the Socialist part of the mixture where who you suck up to and bribe decides who wins, not skill, talent, or productivity. To the extent of its mixture is the extent the schmoozing crony types are empowered.

Let me say it plainly: there's nothing better you could do to keep Comcast, WalMart, and Microsoft in a position of unchallenged power than to advocate for further government controls. If you end bailouts, favors, and the power of government to reward or punish a business you remove the enormous barriers to enter that industry. Large companies would be required to stay innovative, competitive, and productive in order to earn their wealth and stay on top. Incompetent CEO's, schmoozers, and lobbying political peddlers would be overcome and the productive, innovative people would outcompete them.


Summary
In summary, all people are completely different in all aspects of life, and so "income inequality" is good and normal. Wealth isn't a finite pie that exists, it has to be created by the skillful use of a person's mind and work. Increasing wealth is the heart of a modern economy that enables civilization to live above subsistence and expect a better future. And the half-truths buried in the arguments used by OWS are the fault of the Socialist half of the mixed economy not Capitalism. So the solution is to advocate for Capitalism and a wealthy class that doesn't get special favors, bailouts, and protections. Socialism is the system of inequality where who you know, how well you suck up and bribe decide who is favored. Capitalism is the system of equality of opportunity for all who choose to use their mind.

[Demosthenes11]

Summary
In summary, all people are completely different in all aspects of life, and so "income inequality" is good and normal. Wealth isn't a finite pie that exists, it has to be created by the skillful use of a person's mind and work. Increasing wealth is the heart of a modern economy that enables civilization to live above subsistence and expect a better future. And the half-truths buried in the arguments used by OWS are the fault of the Socialist half of the mixed economy not Capitalism. So the solution is to advocate for Capitalism and a wealthy class that doesn't get special favors, bailouts, and protections. Socialism is the system of inequality where who you know, how well you suck up and bribe decide who is favored. Capitalism is the system of equality of opportunity for all who choose to use their mind.

wow fuck you

[Correction]

And so "income inequality" is good and proper. Just as "height inequality", "eye color inequality", "violin playing inequality", or "math skills inequality" are a metaphysical fact. People are as a hard fact *not* equal in knowledge or ability and no amount of laws, or illiterate opinions of a 99% changes that fact. And so "income equality" is an evil and impossible goal. To the extent it could be practiced is the extent to which economic activity stopped functioning and everyone reverted to miserable subsistence living.

[mallister]

best thing i've read on BG in forever.

<3

[Demosthenes11]

the very fact that this dude finds " unprecedented income inequality" to be the opposite of "everyone makes the same" is both offensive and intellectually dishonest

You think someone is making too much and others are making too little? SOCIALIST COMMUNIST NAZI

[Drex]

Wealth isn't a finite pie that exists, it has to be created by the skillful use of a person's mind and work.

i agree! you create wealth by "skillfully using" (exploiting) someone else's mind and work for your own personal gain. that's why people are upset. also, infinite growth potential does not mean infinite size, there is a finite amount of wealth at any given time. more wealth is created every day, but that does not justify extorting it from others by threatening to take away their opportunity (job) if they don't take their beatings and like it. you can't just say, "oh well i took your wealth today, but don't worry, you can create more tomorrow!" and then repeat that excuse every day for 40+ years until they retire penniless. well you can, but it's unethical and morally disgusting.

[Gwynplaine]

i agree! you create wealth by "skillfully using" (exploiting) someone else's mind and work for your own personal gain. that's why people are upset. also, infinite growth potential does not mean infinite size, there is a finite amount of wealth at any given time. more wealth is created every day, but that does not justify extorting it from others by threatening to take away their opportunity (job) if they don't take their beatings and like it. you can't just say, "oh well i took your wealth today, but don't worry, you can create more tomorrow!" and then repeat that excuse every day for 40+ years until they retire penniless. well you can, but it's unethical and morally disgusting.

Holy hyperbole. Working for someone is not equal to being forced into slavery. You agree to it. That is the Marxist view of labor.
It would be nice if emotionalists thought using concepts for a change.

[Elvis]

'Wage slavery' is a legitimate concept. Consent doesn't mean you're signing your soul away.

And ignore this for now since it's off-topic, but when are you going to elaborate on your comment about Ron Paul's FP views? You characterized them as 'always blaming America first' (I think) or 'suicidal'. Isn't THAT 'emotionalist' (sensationalist)?

[Drex]

That is the Marxist view of labor.

if your options are "starve or be exploited", calling it "their choice" and acting like they deserved whatever they had coming to them is disingenuous, which fits in perfectly with what i was saying. next, you'll tell me "life isn't fair" or "they'll create more wealth later because wealth is an infinite pie" (maybe, someday, they'll actually get to keep some) or "if someone has sex at gunpoint, they made a choice and have to live with it", or some other garbage that you believe excuses you for being a piece of shit.