Select Page
Poker Forum
Over 1,291,000 Posts!
Poker ForumFTR Community

Capitalism Rules, Socialism and Communism Suck Thread

Page 4 of 8 FirstFirst ... 23456 ... LastLast
Results 226 to 300 of 595
  1. #226
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    'Do you think taxation is good? And if so, why do you feel this way?'
    Let's go with that.
  2. #227
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Let's go with that.
    Well thank you for letting me clarify the question.

    I think it is necessary inasmuch as there are certain things that can be managed centrally that cannot be handled individually.
  3. #228
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    Well thank you for letting me clarify the question.

    I think it is necessary inasmuch as there are certain things that can be managed centrally that cannot be handled individually.
    By "clarify" you really mean "nullify"

    His question is about redistribution. Can you answer the question in that context?
  4. #229
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    Well thank you for letting me clarify the question.

    I think it is necessary inasmuch as there are certain things that can be managed centrally that cannot be handled individually.
    Okay cool, that's a type of thing I am quite interested in hearing about. If you would like to expound that would be great.


    The reason I asked the question was because you said tax is unequal. I thought that was funny since typically people want taxation to assuage their emotion that doing so results in more equality. So really I just wanted to see what your response was to the question without leading.
  5. #230
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    His question is about redistribution. Can you answer the question in that context?
    Ah. I see you caught that.

    That IQ of yours must be at least 12. Up from 8.
  6. #231
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Ah. I see you caught that.

    That IQ of yours must be at least 12. Up from 8.
    you only need an IQ of 6 to catch your meaning.

    Your meaning was over Poop's head.

    You do the math.
  7. #232
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    We
    I think it is necessary inasmuch as there are certain things that can be managed centrally that cannot be handled individually.
    I'll add that this is maybe the only conceptual reason that I have come up with for why government can be good. The problem, however, is that I have not been able to figure out any way a centralized monopoly is better than otherwise, on average, over time, across all components, etc..
  8. #233
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    The problem, however, is that I have not been able to figure out any way a centralized monopoly is better than otherwise, on average, over time, across all components, etc..
    I think we touched on this a little bit earlier. One of the main reasons people would prefer centralization is simply related to space and/or aesthetics.

    No one wants multiple sets of power lines criss-crossing the landscape. No one wants multiple sets of train tracks taking up land. Imagine if there were 5 different water companies all maintaining their own set of underground pipes. That's 5x more instances of closing down streets and digging up pipes for maintenance. Who needs that bullshit in their town?

    In some cases, the centralized monopoly best meets consumer's needs. Efficient infrastructure may be one of those needs.
  9. #234
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    I think we touched on this a little bit earlier. One of the main reasons people would prefer centralization is simply related to space and/or aesthetics.

    No one wants multiple sets of power lines criss-crossing the landscape. No one wants multiple sets of train tracks taking up land. Imagine if there were 5 different water companies all maintaining their own set of underground pipes. That's 5x more instances of closing down streets and digging up pipes for maintenance. Who needs that bullshit in their town?

    In some cases, the centralized monopoly best meets consumer's needs. Efficient infrastructure may be one of those needs.
    Okay I meant something else. A tax-based monopoly. A government.

    In your example, the market quite easily adjusts for those preferences. The free market naturally gravitates to few producers in some industries.
  10. #235
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    you only need an IQ of 6 to catch your meaning.

    Your meaning was over Poop's head.

    You do the math.
    So i give you credit for having a brain and your response is to do the opposite.

    Not a value judgment, mind you, just an observation.
  11. #236
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Okay cool, that's a type of thing I am quite interested in hearing about. If you would like to expound that would be great.


    The reason I asked the question was because you said tax is unequal. I thought that was funny since typically people want taxation to assuage their emotion that doing so results in more equality. So really I just wanted to see what your response was to the question without leading.
    I think this ground has been covered repeatedly in this forum, but ok. The advantage of centralized organisation is obvious in many domains. One would be military. The US would be much weaker if every state had to decide for itself who to send to war and with what weapons and for what purpose.

    Centralizing the authority requires you centralize the power which in turn requires you find some non-voluntary way of funding that apparatus.
  12. #237
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    So i give you credit for having a brain and your response is to do the opposite.

    Not a value judgment, mind you, just an observation.
    You didn't "give me credit" for anything. You recognize a fact that my IQ is what it is. I'm not sure why that would preclude me from having any particular response with regard to you.

    You recognizing my clinically tested IQ does not obligate me to compliment your intelligence.
  13. #238
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    You didn't "give me credit" for anything. You recognize a fact that my IQ is what it is. I'm not sure why that would preclude me from having any particular response with regard to you.

    You recognizing my clinically tested IQ does not obligate me to compliment your intelligence.
    I recognized it well before you made some claim to it based on a test you supposedly took once, if we are to believe you.

    I could as easily claim an IQ of 160 and it would be an equally meaningless claim.

    The point of my post was to highlight the difference between disputing an argument based on its merits and disputing an argument based on ad hominen.
  14. #239
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    I think this ground has been covered repeatedly in this forum, but ok. The advantage of centralized organisation is obvious in many domains. One would be military. The US would be much weaker if every state had to decide for itself who to send to war and with what weapons and for what purpose.

    Centralizing the authority requires you centralize the power which in turn requires you find some non-voluntary way of funding that apparatus.
    I understand that. I misspoke when I didn't include the mandated monopoly portion of it i.e. that it must be based on tax.
  15. #240
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    I understand that. I misspoke when I didn't include the mandated monopoly portion of it i.e. that it must be based on tax.
    Well, without thinking about it in great detail, I assume it would be hard to have a centralized military command structure without also funding it somehow. And I would guess funding it would involve some sort of centralized tax, be it income tax or tariffs or what have you. Unless you had a Pentagon based on volunteer work, how would you get around that?
  16. #241
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    Well, without thinking about it in great detail, I assume it would be hard to have a centralized military command structure without also funding it somehow. And I would guess funding it would involve some sort of centralized tax, be it income tax or tariffs or what have you. Unless you had a Pentagon based on volunteer work, how would you get around that?
    People who value security voluntarily pay for it. The model works in a bunch of other markets and the military system already is voluntary regarding recruitment, so we have good reason to believe it would work. I estimate that if people were left to their own devices about what to pay for, security forces might even get MORE funding than they currently do. Lots of people really value that stuff but don't currently voluntarily pay for much of it since the tax-based monopoly of government crowds it out.
  17. #242
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    People who value security voluntarily pay for it.
    Well there are some historical examples where this argument is demonstrably untrue. In the war of 1812 for example, there didn't exist a centralized command structure in the US that could draw on resources (generally, soldiers and guns) to defend the interests of the country as a whole. So you had states like VA saying 'this war with the British and Canada doesn't concern us why should we send soldiers to fight it? They're no threat to us.' Meanwhile the Brits could draw soldiers from every corner of their Empire to fight over N. America. And arguably that is the only reason the US doesn't own Canada today.

    Conversely, had the power been centralized, the US gov't could have drafted 300k soldiers and sent them off to take Canada from the British. That it didn't happen that way is wholly because there wasn't a sufficiently strong central gov't in the US with the right to exercise power over individual states.
  18. #243
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    Well there are some historical examples where this argument is demonstrably untrue. In the war of 1812 for example, there didn't exist a centralized command structure in the US that could draw on resources (generally, soldiers and guns) to defend the interests of the country as a whole. So you had states like VA saying 'this war with the British and Canada doesn't concern us why should we send soldiers to fight it? They're no threat to us.' Meanwhile the Brits could draw soldiers from every corner of their Empire to fight over N. America. And arguably that is the only reason the US doesn't own Canada today.

    Conversely, had the power been centralized, the US gov't could have drafted 300k soldiers and sent them off to take Canada from the British. That it didn't happen that way is wholly because there wasn't a sufficiently strong central gov't in the US with the right to exercise power over individual states.
    The bold is an important premise.

    I'm focusing on people's interests. A country's best interest probably include tax and focus on war. But the people in a country are not the same as the country, and those peoples' interests are not the same as the state's interest.
  19. #244
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    The bold is an important premise.

    I'm focusing on people's interests. A country's best interest probably include tax and focus on war. But the people in a country are not the same as the country, and those peoples' interests are not the same as the state's interest.
    My first thought is that the people's interests are inextricably linked with those of the nation. Otherwise there is no reason for nations to exist and we would all live as families independent of any higher order. Thoughts?
  20. #245
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    But the people in a country are not the same as the country, and those peoples' interests are not the same as the state's interest.
    Except in America, where it is the people who are the state.
  21. #246
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    My first thought is that the people's interests are inextricably linked with those of the nation. Otherwise there is no reason for nations to exist and we would all live as families independent of any higher order. Thoughts?
    Yes, they absolutely are. Though not entirely so. As you know, nation is different than state. You can have a nation without a state. A person that interacts with others in a sufficiently large society depends a good deal on the nation, and the same is true if that person has a state that sets laws by decree and executes them through taxes.
  22. #247
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Except in America, where it is the people who are the state.
    While the state is supposed to depend ultimately on the aggregation of persons (if a democracy), the person and the state are in many ways different entities with different preferences.
  23. #248


    One thing I will say is that The Bernank is smarter than this. But The Krug. Man the Krug. He's something else. He'd find a way to rationalize this. It's just what The Krug does.
  24. #249
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    People who value security voluntarily pay for it. The model works in a bunch of other markets and the military system already is voluntary regarding recruitment, so we have good reason to believe it would work. I estimate that if people were left to their own devices about what to pay for, security forces might even get MORE funding than they currently do. Lots of people really value that stuff but don't currently voluntarily pay for much of it since the tax-based monopoly of government crowds it out.
    You seem to be ignoring the element of secrecy.

    A massive massive fraction of defense spending is spent on research and development of new and better technologies. And a significant factor in our national security is the function of keeping that information secret from our enemies.

    If you've ever worked at a DOD contractor, you know that this is no joke. You can get fired for leaving your office at night without closing your blinds.

    Is it possible for the public to trust a collection of private entities to keep our secrets safe? Isn't it hugely important that the government's oversight of security carries the force of law?
  25. #250
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    Is it possible for the public to trust a collection of private entities to keep our secrets safe? Isn't it hugely important that the government's oversight of security carries the force of law?
    This is only as possible in each of the private sector or government to the degree by which the consumers or constituents can make poor judgment and behavior on the part of those with the secrecy costly. As far as I can tell from the evidence, it is much easier to make firms in a free market account for the costs they cause than it is to do the same for government.
  26. #251
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    This is only as possible in each of the private sector or government to the degree by which the consumers or constituents can make poor judgment and behavior on the part of those with the secrecy costly. As far as I can tell from the evidence, it is much easier to make firms in a free market account for the costs they cause than it is to do the same for government.
    I recognize all of those words. I know what they all mean. I can't for the life of me figure out why you arranged them that way.

    Let me re-ask the question.

    Effective military spending includes significant expenditures into research/development of new and better technologies. A significant part of this recipe is knowing the enemies capabilities, and then developing technologies to counter, outmatch, or defend against them.

    If national security is outsourced to private institutions.....who is checking up on the enemy?

    Could private institutions spy as well as the government?

    Even if they can.....aren't they motivated to keep their findings private and not share that information with the rest of the market??

    It's not hard to figure out how that would diminish national security. Furthermore, you would just end up with whichever company has the best spies dominating the market, and making all of the other companies obsolete pretty quickly.

    Which just kinda gets us back where we started.
  27. #252
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    I recognize all of those words. I know what they all mean. I can't for the life of me figure out why you arranged them that way.

    Let me re-ask the question.

    Effective military spending includes significant expenditures into research/development of new and better technologies. A significant part of this recipe is knowing the enemies capabilities, and then developing technologies to counter, outmatch, or defend against them.

    If national security is outsourced to private institutions.....who is checking up on the enemy?

    Could private institutions spy as well as the government?

    Even if they can.....aren't they motivated to keep their findings private and not share that information with the rest of the market??

    It's not hard to figure out how that would diminish national security. Furthermore, you would just end up with whichever company has the best spies dominating the market, and making all of the other companies obsolete pretty quickly.

    Which just kinda gets us back where we started.
    We'd be back where we started IF the revenues of the security firms came by mandate instead of by choice of the buyer (and also choice of the seller).

    A system in which the revenues come by choice instead of mandates has all the same concerns that the current system has (one by mandate). It addresses your listed concerns to varying degrees of success, like the current system has varying degrees of success. When the revenues come by choice, market factors that reduce cost, increase quantity, and increase quality are more powerful than if revenues are mandated.

    I don't think that getting into details about "what would happen in this circumstances if..." is useful if the above premise is not accepted as a distinction between the two.
    Last edited by wufwugy; 01-28-2018 at 12:54 PM.
  28. #253
    spoonitnow's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Posts
    14,219
    Location
    North Carolina
    Which is one of the fundamental reasons why socialism and communism suck and why capitalism fucking rules. The shit's called a win-win situation.
  29. #254
    I really wish that tax cut was more efficiency oriented than cut oriented. Rate changes (other than marginal rate changes) might have a very small positive impact on real growth, but it's the efficiency gains from reform that have a large impact as well as make crises and recessions less likely and less severe.
  30. #255
    An economist describes how Canada didn't have the Great Depression and pre-Great Depression bank failures like the US did because US banks were highly regulated and Canadian banks were not regulated.

    http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/..._problems.html

    To summarize, three reasons seem to explain why this bad solution was adopted.* First, an over-regulated banking system was fueling regular crises. Second, domestic and international opinion favored government intervention (supporting an old populist suspicion of private banks in America). Third, Wall Street bankers welcomed a central bank as a protection for their dominant position.
    *The wide adoption of central banks.
  31. #256
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    An economist describes how Canada didn't have the Great Depression and pre-Great Depression bank failures like the US did because US banks were highly regulated and Canadian banks were not regulated.

    http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/..._problems.html



    *The wide adoption of central banks.

    I've heard the opposite explanation given for why Canada was less affected by the 2008 crisis than the US.

    http://www.nber.org/digest/dec11/w17312.html

    Though I guess you could say the difference was not in regulation vs. lack of regulation but in centralized regulation vs. fragmented regulation.
  32. #257
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    I've heard the opposite explanation given for why Canada was less affected by the 2008 crisis than the US.

    http://www.nber.org/digest/dec11/w17312.html

    Though I guess you could say the difference was not in regulation vs. lack of regulation but in centralized regulation vs. fragmented regulation.
    It's more about what incentives individual regulations cause. I don't know anything about the Canadian banking system proximate to 2008. I know the US system well and the regulations incentivized the lending practices that have post hoc been labelled poor.

    Leading up to 2008 was essentially the banks doing what was in their best interests given the standards the government set. Those standards led to outcomes that were atypical. When nominal GDP expectations began falling due to the Fed conducting contractionary monetary policy for somewhat unrelated reasons, the first thing to "go" was the newly atypical portion of the economy.
  33. #258
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    It's more about what incentives individual regulations cause. I don't know anything about the Canadian banking system proximate to 2008. I know the US system well and the regulations incentivized the lending practices that have post hoc been labelled poor.

    Leading up to 2008 was essentially the banks doing what was in their best interests given the standards the government set. Those standards led to outcomes that were atypical. When nominal GDP expectations began falling due to the Fed conducting contractionary monetary policy for somewhat unrelated reasons, the first thing to "go" was the newly atypical portion of the economy.
    BTW, this is the opinion (approximately) of a subset of economists. It is my opinion because it coheres the best with what I know of the data and the economic theory. A larger subset of economists is slowly (but surely) evolving towards many elements of the above. Neat to note, I had a professor who didn't agree with me at all on this, then at a later date I showed her data she hadn't seen before and she was surprised by it and she told me that she agreed with me on the relevant component (that she previously had said she didn't agree with). That was fun for me.
  34. #259
    Maybe you guys are more informed on the history of the 2008 financial crisis than I am, but the story I heard was that banks lacked solvency due to a high number of low-quality loans on their books. Loans that got there as a result of Clinton-era de-regulations that made mortgages more accessible.

    Essentially, it was decided that a policy of loan approval/disapproval that was based on financial merit was biased against poor people. And when democrats say "poor people" they mean "black people".

    Then in the late 90's and early 2000's we saw an increased prevalence in some exotic financing programs that allowed more people to buy houses. Not only that, vehicles like the 'interest-only' mortagage allowed people to buy houses they couldn't afford by offering extremely low payments in the initial years, followed by inflated payments in the later years. They sold people on the idea of "hey, don't worry about what happens in 7 years from now. YOu're a smart, hard working guy...you'll surely be making more money by then"

    So i'm not really seeing how regulation caused the crisis. Seems to be quite the opposite. the government allowed predatory practices to take over the market. Had they been a little more on top of things....ie. regulated more....perhaps the banks could have maintained solvency
  35. #260
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    Maybe you guys are more informed on the history of the 2008 financial crisis than I am, but the story I heard was that banks lacked solvency due to a high number of low-quality loans on their books. Loans that got there as a result of Clinton-era de-regulations that made mortgages more accessible.
    It isn't clear how this can be the case in theory. Market valuations are based on expectations that the evaluated components are causing that valuation. If it were the case that the banks were behaving in any ways that were harmful that others could identify, that would have been reflected in how others assessed them, which would have impacted the banks' abilities to continue their behavior. This also applies to any regulators. They don't have a magic crystal ball that allows them to see things the markets don't. If it is the case that the markets didn't evaluate the bank behavior as bad, then it is necessarily the case that regulators couldn't do so reliably either

    Essentially, it was decided that a policy of loan approval/disapproval that was based on financial merit was biased against poor people. And when democrats say "poor people" they mean "black people".

    Then in the late 90's and early 2000's we saw an increased prevalence in some exotic financing programs that allowed more people to buy houses. Not only that, vehicles like the 'interest-only' mortagage allowed people to buy houses they couldn't afford by offering extremely low payments in the initial years, followed by inflated payments in the later years. They sold people on the idea of "hey, don't worry about what happens in 7 years from now. YOu're a smart, hard working guy...you'll surely be making more money by then"

    So i'm not really seeing how regulation caused the crisis. Seems to be quite the opposite. the government allowed predatory practices to take over the market. Had they been a little more on top of things....ie. regulated more....perhaps the banks could have maintained solvency
    The question is why did this stuff happen? Why did banks act atypically? It was because of incentives the regulators gave them, like the government creating higher demand for mortgages and created the mortgage-backed securities market, and like the government giving guarantees to bankers that the government would cover their risks and failures.
    Last edited by wufwugy; 01-31-2018 at 08:50 PM.
  36. #261
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    It isn't clear how this can be the case in theory. Market valuations are based on expectations that the evaluated components are causing that valuation. If it were the case that the banks were behaving in any ways that were harmful that others could identify, that would have been reflected in how others assessed them, which would have impacted the banks' abilities to continue their behavior. This also applies to any regulators. They don't have a magic crystal ball that allows them to see things the markets don't. If it is the case that the markets didn't evaluate the bank behavior as bad, then it is necessarily the case that regulators couldn't do so reliably either
    I think the banks knew the loans were bad. That's why prior to this...poor people could not get mortgages. You don't need a crystal ball to predict that broke people can't pay bills.

    But like you said, the government guaranteed a lot of these programs, so why wouldn't the banks gamble? There's no risk!

    these mortgage practices were encouraged by the government through de-regulation, and risk mitigation. their goal was to address income inequality by declaring that home ownership was a "right", and thus should be accessible to everyone. Any policy that excludes the poor (the way a sensible loan approval process would) is perceived as racist. The government believed it could correct systemic racism that prevented black people from achieving the American dream.

    and it typical congressional fashion.....lawmakers didn't really give a shit what would happen 10 years later.
  37. #262
    I'm reading up on some government sponsored enterprises again to make sure I remember facts correctly. This is simply mind-blowing:

    The government tried to avoid taking over the two GSEs, which were supposed to act as private corporations with a government guarantee.
    Any economist worth his salt, I mean ANY economist worth his salt, would tell you that this is a recipe for fucking disaster. Moral hazard up the yazoo. Moral hazard that can easily cause systemic risk.

    It's not even that the GSE's were the only part of this moral hazard. The government had a detailed history of bailing out banks when there was enough systemic risk and failures. Incentives 101 tells us that this leads to more systemic risk and failures.
  38. #263
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    I think the banks knew the loans were bad.
    We should make a distinction between knowing that they're bad and knowing that they're bad, so to speak. Market evaluations change based on all information. They evaluate what are normally bad loans as not bad if there is a sufficient enough guarantee or payoff or risk-management such that makes those loans not bad. And banks got that from government.

    Like I would not loan a crackhead $100 at 5% interest rate. But if somebody else with sufficient credibility guarantees me 5% on the 100 even if the crackhead doesn't pay, well I'll make that loan then. This is a simplification.
  39. #264
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    and it typical congressional fashion.....lawmakers didn't really give a shit what would happen 10 years later.
    Most people (or all people) do not employ logic above first-order for most things. I think the reason I like economics so much is because it's all about higher order logic. It's about evaluating what an action incentivizes (first-order), what that result incentivizes (second-order), what that result incentivizes (third-order), etc..

    In general I think it is fair to say that people typically don't think about incentives, don't understand the concept, etc..
  40. #265
    spoonitnow's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Posts
    14,219
    Location
    North Carolina
  41. #266
  42. #267
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Most people (or all people) do not employ logic above first-order for most things. I think the reason I like economics so much is because it's all about higher order logic. It's about evaluating what an action incentivizes (first-order), what that result incentivizes (second-order), what that result incentivizes (third-order), etc..

    In general I think it is fair to say that people typically don't think about incentives, don't understand the concept, etc..
    Economics is inherently sexist and racist because it was developed and advanced purely through white, cis males.
    Resist.
  43. #268
    I'm 99% sure this is spoon, and he's not even being subtle about it.

    I could check their IP's, but that ruins the fun.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  44. #269
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Quote Originally Posted by SpatulaItNow View Post
    We didn't need economics when this species was a race of nomadic hunter gatherers.
    Someone doesn't know what economics means.
  45. #270
    Two hunter gatherers are talking.
    "Today I collected lots of strawberries, and killed me a deer",
    "Nice. I got myself some raspberries, and killed me a goat",
    "Ooh raspberries, trade me some, I'll swap you for some strawberries",
    "Um what is this shit? Trade? Swap? Fuck off, the raspberries are in my bit, now do one before I spear you".

    notspoon has a point.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  46. #271
    spoonitnow's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Posts
    14,219
    Location
    North Carolina
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Someone doesn't know what economics means.
    Yeah pretty much everyone who advocates communism.
  47. #272
    CoccoBill's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Posts
    2,504
    Location
    Finding my game
    Let's say the whole planet switches to laissez-faire capitalism and in 2100 there's 15 billion people, with a global GDP (GGP?) of $1M per capita. How much is the average working salary in the US?
    Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit.

  48. #273
    Quote Originally Posted by CoccoBill View Post
    Let's say the whole planet switches to laissez-faire capitalism and in 2100 there's 15 billion people, with a global GDP (GGP?) of $1M per capita. How much is the average working salary in the US?
    No way to know.

    Inequality would likely decline significantly.
  49. #274
    Quote Originally Posted by spoonitnow View Post
    Yeah pretty much everyone who advocates communism.
    Liberalism and conservatism are two sides of the same coin. Socialism is a mangled chunk of wood pretending to be a coin.
  50. #275
    CoccoBill's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Posts
    2,504
    Location
    Finding my game
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    No way to know.

    Inequality would likely decline significantly.
    Why's that?
    Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit.

  51. #276
    Quote Originally Posted by CoccoBill View Post
    Why's that?
    Because it has been happening since the adoption of capitalism. Why does the term "middle class" even exists in the first place? It is a description of increasing resource equality. Back before the "middle class" was a thing, the gap in real resources between the rich and the poor was astronomical. Today it's much smaller, and in fact the poor today have more than the rich did a few hundred years ago.

    Free market capitalism is the best tool we know of for the poor to grow their capital, and there is a lot more room for capital growth on their low end rather than the wealthy high end. On the high end, people tend to use their capital near capacity. On the low end, there are billions who are flat out restricted by governments from using their capital. If we take China for example, its rapid growth doesn't derive from something new or special; instead it derives from the government lifting restrictions on the types of capital the poor rely on the most. It's happening all through SE Asia and many other countries, and it's the same process that turned the West from poor to modern.
  52. #277
    spoonitnow's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Posts
    14,219
    Location
    North Carolina
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Because it has been happening since the adoption of capitalism. Why does the term "middle class" even exists in the first place? It is a description of increasing resource equality. Back before the "middle class" was a thing, the gap in real resources between the rich and the poor was astronomical. Today it's much smaller, and in fact the poor today have more than the rich did a few hundred years ago.
    But Drumpf.
  53. #278
    CoccoBill's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Posts
    2,504
    Location
    Finding my game
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Because it has been happening since the adoption of capitalism. Why does the term "middle class" even exists in the first place? It is a description of increasing resource equality. Back before the "middle class" was a thing, the gap in real resources between the rich and the poor was astronomical. Today it's much smaller, and in fact the poor today have more than the rich did a few hundred years ago.

    Free market capitalism is the best tool we know of for the poor to grow their capital, and there is a lot more room for capital growth on their low end rather than the wealthy high end. On the high end, people tend to use their capital near capacity. On the low end, there are billions who are flat out restricted by governments from using their capital. If we take China for example, its rapid growth doesn't derive from something new or special; instead it derives from the government lifting restrictions on the types of capital the poor rely on the most. It's happening all through SE Asia and many other countries, and it's the same process that turned the West from poor to modern.
    My understanding is that income inequality has been increasing in many first world countries.



    When was capitalism adopted?
    Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit.

  54. #279
    ^^^I would like to know how those measurements are made.

    Unless that organization has done something that nobody else on the planet has done, the measurements are very bad. All income inequality data (that I know of) make some egregious mistakes that range from not adjusting for important variables and misusing important variables.
  55. #280
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ^^^I would like to know how those measurements are made.
    Top 1% share of income is a terrible measure of what the graph is implying. That's all you need to know.
  56. #281
    Indeed. It is likely that the vast majority of the "income" being measured as income of the "top 1%" isn't comparable to the income of other brackets. Capital gains is not income like wage income.

    Also the "top 1%" isn't even defined in a meaningful way. The number of people in that bracket is far larger than 1% of people, depending on timing of different transactions and age.
  57. #282
    CoccoBill's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Posts
    2,504
    Location
    Finding my game
    Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit.

  58. #283
    Quote Originally Posted by CoccoBill View Post
    Thanks. I like reviewing the research.

    The paper conflates earnings with capital gains, effectively measuring twice the earnings from which capital gains derive. Data that conflate these are not reliable sources of income distribution.

    Here's an economist discussing this: http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=7091
  59. #284
    Quote Originally Posted by CoccoBill View Post
    I'll add that econometrics (what this paper is) is wrought with problems. It isn't even that we know econometrics is not reliable for developing useful conclusions, but that we know it's mostly not reliable. Why is there movement in economics to do econometrics? I'm not sure. My guess is because it's sciency seeming. Taleb has said it's hack statistics. In my experience, it is hack statistics. I replicated a top econometric paper for a class, and yeah, it included a bunch of p-hacking and probably overfitting. Both not good. And the paper's conclusion? It was unable to adjust for some very important variables that could easily have changed the output entirely, but that didn't happen so the paper shows its particular and probably wrong effect.

    In addition, the results in these kinds of papers are all over the board. For example, there is a very clear understanding of the impact of the minimum wage on quantity demanded of labor, yet the researchers who study the minimum wage still end up finding whatever they want to find. This is especially a problem since the results that disagree with the established theory don't themselves have much of any theoretical backing. This is a sign that we're more likely dealing with testing parameters problems than theory problems.

    Here's an economist discussing related problems: http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=7215
  60. #285
    Another thing I want to add is that the study finds no impact on growth from changes within high incomes. It finds only impact on growth from changes between low and high incomes. This tells us that there is likely something else going on, that income inequality could be epiphenomenal.

    The author jumps to the idea that redistribution could make things more equal. I know of no real theory for how it could. There is theory, however, for how redistribution could make things less equal.
  61. #286
    Economists are editing out basic economics in their textbooks based on their precious fee fees.

    http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/...l_krugman.html

    The real losers in the rejection of economics aren't us; the real losers are the poor kids who are made destitute by those who reject economics.
  62. #287
    spoonitnow's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Posts
    14,219
    Location
    North Carolina
    I have a friend whose nephew is a little hustler in the making, and he's like 10 or 11 or so. He started buying packs of like five Reeses or small Hershey bars for $1 at the store and was selling them at school for $0.50 apiece out of his book bag.

    So get this fucking shit. He gets in trouble for it or whatever, and they have to have a parent-teacher conference. My friend's sister (the kid's mom) was there, and the principal was trying to explain to my friend's nephew how unfair it was for him to pay $1 for the pack of five pieces of candy and then to sell them for $0.50.

    He was literally trying to tell him that it was unfair to buy and sell candy to people who were voluntarily making the exchange.

    He was trying to tell him that capitalism is unfair.
  63. #288
    http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/...t-schools.html

    My favorite part.....

    "I was blinded, I think, by a belief that big government was a good thing."

    Now she knows better.
  64. #289
    spoonitnow's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Posts
    14,219
    Location
    North Carolina
    Same old shit. It's a perfect example of why I'm in favor of the voucher system. Competition and choice are good things.
  65. #290
  66. #291
    Quote Originally Posted by spoonitnow View Post
    I have a friend whose nephew is a little hustler in the making, and he's like 10 or 11 or so. He started buying packs of like five Reeses or small Hershey bars for $1 at the store and was selling them at school for $0.50 apiece out of his book bag.

    So get this fucking shit. He gets in trouble for it or whatever, and they have to have a parent-teacher conference. My friend's sister (the kid's mom) was there, and the principal was trying to explain to my friend's nephew how unfair it was for him to pay $1 for the pack of five pieces of candy and then to sell them for $0.50.

    He was literally trying to tell him that it was unfair to buy and sell candy to people who were voluntarily making the exchange.

    He was trying to tell him that capitalism is unfair.
    Early in middle school a friend and I had the bootleg we were running out of our lockers busted. It was essentially the exact same story.
  67. #292
    Maybe a decent way of conceptualizing the difference between free market capitalism and socialism is that in socialism you can't turn CNN off; in capitalism you can.
  68. #293
    I really wouldn't have a problem with CNN if they were just honest at this point about who and what they are. I mean, MSNBC is way left. But they aren't shy about it. They embrace it. It's part of their identity.

    CNN is still trying to pass itself off as an impartial source of "news", and a lot of people still view it that way. Which means those people are consuming left-wing analysis and commentary as if it's fact.
  69. #294
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    I really wouldn't have a problem with CNN if they were just honest at this point about who and what they are. I mean, MSNBC is way left. But they aren't shy about it. They embrace it. It's part of their identity.

    CNN is still trying to pass itself off as an impartial source of "news", and a lot of people still view it that way. Which means those people are consuming left-wing analysis and commentary as if it's fact.
    IKR?!?

    It's like Fox News calling itself 'fair and balanced'. Or did they stop doing that cause it wasn't honest.
  70. #295
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    IKR?!?

    It's like Fox News calling itself 'fair and balanced'. Or did they stop doing that cause it wasn't honest.
    Say what you want about Fox, but they aren't afraid to put out both sides of an issue and debate. Just because their guys win alot doesn't mean it's not fair.
  71. #296
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    Say what you want about Fox, but they aren't afraid to put out both sides of an issue and debate. Just because their guys win alot doesn't mean it's not fair.
    Right, cause CNN never brings on a stupid member of the other side to make the other side look like idiots.
  72. #297
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    Right, cause CNN never brings on a stupid member of the other side to make the other side look like idiots.
    Dude....do you even watch CNN??
  73. #298
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    I really wouldn't have a problem with CNN if they were just honest at this point about who and what they are.
    Like if CNN was honest about creating terrorists because it's good for ratings?
  74. #299
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Like if CNN was honest about creating terrorists because it's good for ratings?
    Not sure how many terrorists actually get their start by watching American news. Could be a nonzero number, but hard to imagine it's much bigger than zero.
  75. #300
    Monsters like being famous for being monsters.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •