Originally Posted by Aramea

Wow, deja vu all over again ...

Yeah. It seems the Yankees are appropriate to Plawright.

Wonkette corrected us both. I thanked her. You danced did something else.

Originally Posted by Aramea

So, if you own stock your holding down the sofa is more of sacrifice for the greater good ... Got it !!!

Stocks go up, stocks go down (if you hadn't noticed). It's a risk. Countries that punish stocks are countries you don't want to live in.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Yeah. It seems the Yankees are appropriate to Plawright.

No different than the Randian voodoo offered non-stop by Libertarians.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

You did not address "castles and landed gentry".

Castles and landed gentry are an issue of real estate, not dividend bearing stocks. We could discuss real estate, but the answers the same. I don't have how they got the real estate. They could have got it selling sea shells by the sea shore. So what?

Real estate is property. Stocks are property. And "so what?" is the answer of someone who does not make connections. OK. At least I see that you are not malevolent just greatly under-informed. Maybe someone else here has the patience to school you. But, sorry, I don't.

Best...

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Gimme that MMT Religion!
Gimme that MMT Religion!
Gimme that MMT Religion!
It's good enough for thee!

One word -

Coward.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

That's because they have most of the income. also, I don't think your statistic includes payroll taxes.

Are we counting payroll taxes? I thought they went into a lock box? (just kidding)

If I get around to it, I'll find out what percentage of total taxes come form personal income taxes.

I'm not sure how you'd count corporate taxes.

Originally Posted by Aramea

Underemployment is becoming a very real problem for people. You start better and sink to the bottom.

Progressive policies don't change that. They make it worse.

Originally Posted by Aramea

No different than the Randian voodoo offered non-stop by Libertarians.

If think Rand has more to offer, but they really can't stop either, can they?

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Stocks go up, stocks go down (if you hadn't noticed). It's a risk. Countries that punish stocks are countries you don't want to live in.

I moved what I could to precious metals 8 years ago. I still don't spend my days eating bon bons. I know I am being a bit judgemental, but the sofa sitters seem to thing they are the shit while someone living on food stamps and a shit job is a lazy asshole. I am merely calling bullshit on that one.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Progressive policies don't change that. They make it worse.

Agree to disagree. It is situational ...

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

Real estate is property. Stocks are property. And "so what?" is the answer of someone who does not make connections. OK. At least I see that you are not malevolent just greatly under-informed. Maybe someone else here has the patience to school you. But, sorry, I don't.

Best...

You're the one who seems underinformed. You don't even understand the most basic principles of a free market economy.

Best...

Originally Posted by playwrite

One word -

Coward.

Oh. But Playwrithg called me a name. I guess I lose the great internet debate!

Gimme that MMT Religion!
Gimme that MMT Religion!
Gimme that MMT Religion!
It's good enough for thee!

Originally Posted by Aramea

I moved what I could to precious metals 8 years ago. I still don't spend my days eating bon bons. I know I am being a bit judgemental, but the sofa sitters seem to thing they are the shit while someone living on food stamps and a shit job is a lazy asshole. I am merely calling bullshit on that one.

I'd say the difference is that dividends come the money they earned putting their money at risk, while food stamps you get for...

fwiw, I guess the precious metals thing worked for you. I wish I was starting to invest back then.

Cheers!

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Oh. But Playwrithg called me a name. I guess I lose the great internet debate!

Gimme that MMT Religion!
Gimme that MMT Religion!
Gimme that MMT Religion!
It's good enough for thee!

Debate???

If you recall, you had turned Odin's statement on the limits to charity around to assert that govt has the same limitations -

http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/s...307#post393307

I responded with this -

Originally Posted by playwrite

But the fact of the matter is that the federal govt could provide jobs to anyone willing and able to work. That would end most poverty in the nation both by direct employment and by the secondary impact of creating additional aggregate demand to get the economy humming along.

It could be done in a relatively short amount of time. And for the foreseeable future, it could be done without any cost to our society - no increase in inflation and no increase in taxes.

The only thing holding us back is ignorance of how a fiat currency system actually works.

So no, the two statements - yours and Odin's - are not equivalent.

Your responses since then have been -

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

I'll let Justin and JDG deal with your magic pony MMT perpetual motion machine.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

So say you and Many Monkey Turds. That's why even progressives here think you're a joke.


-I'm not the one pushing for Weimar Part II.
Thanks for wasting my time.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Gimme that MMT Religion!
Gimme that MMT Religion!
Gimme that MMT Religion!
It's good enough for thee!

Implying that you have engaged in battle when you have not clearly confirms your primary characteristic.

It is tough to hid cowardice when the battlefield is in writing.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

In a free market economy, it wasn't "given" to them, they earned it.

Of course there is not now, nor has there been in Western History (at least) such a genuinely free, unencumbered economy. We are born into a pre-existing context, and that context has always featured unearned, uneven initial conditions of purely wealth (that is, money or property, as opposed to talent, character, or whatever).

You do yourself no favors in trying to pretend that no class of people possess what they possess except thanks to their own virtues. It simply isn't so.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Are we counting payroll taxes? I thought they went into a lock box? (just kidding)

If I get around to it, I'll find out what percentage of total taxes come form personal income taxes.

I'm not sure how you'd count corporate taxes.

Here's a good presentation of the data you want - from the Tax Policy Center

Although progressivity is marginal at best, I should note that the high income earners fall into two classes:

• "I work for my money" - These are typically very highly paid people like star athletes and movie stars, who are paid for the work they do. Earners pay at Earned Income rates, so these folks really are paying their way.
• "My money works for me" - Typically, these are the ones Warren Buffett meant. These people make Unearned Income, which gets preferential treatment. Hedge fund managers, who take their multi-millions to Billions in the form of carried interest, capital gains and dividends, pay a measly 15% in Federal income taxes.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Odin.

Working 40 hours a week is not "unjust" "cruel" or "immoral." Most business owners did it before they got where they are, and most of them still do it.

Now, try some math.

If you're on minimum age and work 40 hours a week, you're earning over $14,000 a year. I admit that this is before taxes which are ostensibly for their benefit, but even after taxes, you're looking at well over $11,000 a year (it will depend on jurisdiction). You have plenty of choices. Cut down on your beer intake or cable TV. As Sarte said, you are free to choose; invent! Anyway, you're not going to die.

And how many people do you know who stay at minimum wage?

And can you tell me without frothing at the mouth?

In Albuquerque, the cheapest one-room apartment runs $450 a month, sometimes with utilities if you're lucky, sometimes without. So there's half your wages right there.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Odin.

Working 40 hours a week is not "unjust" "cruel" or "immoral." Most business owners did it before they got where they are, and most of them still do it.

Now, try some math.

If you're on minimum age and work 40 hours a week, you're earning over $14,000 a year. I admit that this is before taxes which are ostensibly for their benefit, but even after taxes, you're looking at well over $11,000 a year (it will depend on jurisdiction). You have plenty of choices. Cut down on your beer intake or cable TV. As Sarte said, you are free to choose; invent! Anyway, you're not going to die.

And how many people do you know who stay at minimum wage?

And can you tell me without frothing at the mouth?

Sacrifice more so that the rich can wax richer! Suffer for their avarice! Then they will lavish upon you bounties that will far exceed your sacrifices!

Look at the reality:

We now have a problem of productivity outstripping demand. Maybe we don't need to work 40 hours a week just to survive as was the reality of the late 1930s -- when the 40-hour workweek was a huge and daring reform. We see more concentration of economic power in the hands of fewer people and entities. Giant firms are crushing their competitors, and giant corporations have been paring their workforces steadily since the 1980s. Manufacturing companies are becoming importers instead of manufacturers.

People are going to minimum-wage jobs as the better-paying jobs that they used to have disappear. It's not that incompetent people are being cast off and forced to start over, which always was so. "Cut back on the beer intake?" People are already cutting back on the beer intake. Beer, which used to be recession-proof, is no longer so. Cut back on cable TV? People are already doing so by trimming away high-priced subscription TV services. To be sure, the content on Turner Classic Movies and FoX Movie Channel is richer than what is on the subscription movie channels.

I know the solution that you ersatz aristocrats offer the expendable person: suffer on behalf of us, but take vicarious delight in our ostentatious indulgence. That's how things were in Russia a century ago, and look at how that turned out.

Lenin made the mistake of trying to create socialism before establishing political competition, representative government, objective justice, and checks and balances; American socialists recognize that what the Founding Fathers did right must be preserved.

What's next? Eat less? Sure, there are people obese on fast foods and convenience foods, but there is much nervous eating. Sell off the car and take the bus? For most people, waiting 30 minutes for the bus both days is a waste of life.

We do not need to go back to the norms of 120 years ago when the industrial worker, miner, or farm laborer could expect to work 70 hours a week from childhood, remain destitute all his life, and die broken at age 40 or so. Sure, it is possible -- only at the risk of a Marxist-Leninist revolution.

Oh -- Jean-Paul Sartre was a leftist!

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Gimme that MMT religion!
Gimme that MMT religion!
Gimme that MMT religion!
It's good enough for she!

Buh-bye -- I have enough yapping puppies in my neighborhood....

Wallace-Glick: Does any one get the sense that there is something more connected here than just the occassional (usually flattery) throw-away?

Originally Posted by playwrite

Wallace-Glick: Does any one get the sense that there is something more connected here than just the occassional (usually flattery) throw-away?

Nah. I'm quite certain that James D. Glick was born long before 1988.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Of course there is not now, nor has there been in Western History (at least) such a genuinely free, unencumbered economy. We are born into a pre-existing context, and that context has always featured unearned, uneven initial conditions of purely wealth (that is, money or property, as opposed to talent, character, or whatever).

You do yourself no favors in trying to pretend that no class of people possess what they possess except thanks to their own virtues. It simply isn't so.

This. I was born white and female and to a family who have been land-owners since before the Revolutionary War. My success rests in part on the shoulders of my ancestors who sent their sons to college in the early 1800s and even educated their daughters. I know this and frankly was raised to think that since I was given advantages that I had a responsibility to give back. My ancestors were of the upper class. I am in the social register. There were some serious capitalists in my family. And I benefited from that in more ways that I probably recognize. I had f*cking advantages that weren't all tied to money, since my parents didn't have that much, but those benefits definitely were and are tied to class and race and being upper-middle class white in the US. That female thing is a bit of a hiccup. But it would behoove all of us to think of all the people, the constructs that helped us on our way. For me, to an extent, it was my class and my place in this society only by virtue of my birth. I speak "right." I act "right." I know the drill.

For my BIL it was his brilliance in math and all those people who saw it and who taught him and encouraged him. And that includes the US government--the the DEA. But he thinks he did it alone. He doesn't think of the gov't grants that made his Ph.D possible.

For others, it may have been scholarships--provided by who? Maybe the gov't, a mentor, a social group, a benefactor of some kind. None us ever does it by ourselves. Maybe it's mummy or daddy's money. Maybe it's our talent that gets recognized by a mentor who then helps us get funding, private or public. But there is someone helping our way. Maybe it's the guy who taught us how to do something. Then it's our responsibility to pass it on. It's always our responsibility to pass it on. For whatever mondo (old term but works here) capitalists ancestors I had, that is one thing that has come through. You have to pass it on. You got lucky. You've got advantages that other people don't. Don't fncking feel sorry for yourself. You're fortunate. And your good fortune should be spread to others. You give back in whatever way you can.

I learned that from my Lost (Nomad) grandparents and grand-uncles and -aunts. I am not convinced that the current Nomads understand this.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

If Paris Hilton wants to waste her money, that's her bidness. Not yours.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

It's up to the individual to decide, because (using Rani's term) it's their karma.

Yes, that's exactly it.
A couple of people have joked that they'd love to be the idle rich, but I'd never trade places with Paris Hilton. She's a mess.
And yes, that's her (bad) karma.

Originally Posted by playwrite

Wallace-Glick: Does any one get the sense that there is something more connected here than just the occassional (usually flattery) throw-away?

Wallace just tried to report Glick to the webmaster, so I doubt it.