Good point...
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Depression in the US, My ass.
- Thread starter KINGOFSHORTS
- Start date
Good point...
yeah well, I was getting to that, but I didn't want to alienate readers who may not yet understand anti logic (it's a lot like anti matter and difficult for many who have been to college to comprehend.)Quote from Ed Breen:
Oldtime, I didn't write anything that could objectively be interpreted to mean that I didn't care about your fictional, only partly articulated and defined 'person' in NJ who you made up for argument sake. I suggested that your argument was disjointed and the connection you appeared to be attempting was not logical, then I asked you a question about your 'NJ man' to see if I could understand your construct. You didn't answer my question; instead of developing further detail about your 'sim guy' you simply started making stuff up about me and then about economists and then you started making up stuff about your view of economics. You disregarded all that I shared with you about wealth, assets, capital, labor, investment and growth and did not respond to those ideas. You changed the subject and made conclusory statements about fictional characters that were not supported by any factual analysis. I guess the structure I offered you was not as much fun as your imagination and prejudices.
Do you think the guys who are not building houses for rich people now are better off? You didn't mention whether these apparently oppressed home construction workers used to get paid or even whether they liked their work. Do you think they are liberated by unemployment...freed from stifling servitude? In your view as creator, did they purhaps become self actualized in thier new liberation from the persecution of employment as street poets and philosphers of a new found utopia?...or are they in the food stamp chart, swapping four roses?
otherwise, therer's a number, a concrete number, 49k, and that's the average citizens income and I want that to go up. Or just to buy more, or a life where they don't need that much. If that number goes down the economy is bad as far as we are all concerned. If it goes up the economy is improving, and if it stays the same it is stagnating. So economists can talk all they want about revenue flows and I don't know what all, but it don't mean anything until it moves that number.
Folks, here is a video, not completely relevant to the topic of this thread, but I
think you will find it interesting
Rogue traders:
"... They're the bad boys of high finance, burning millions, sometimes billions of our cash. But are rogue traders just maverick loners, or a product of a high-rolling banking culture that's out of control? ..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBqd4HN9igo
think you will find it interesting
Rogue traders:
"... They're the bad boys of high finance, burning millions, sometimes billions of our cash. But are rogue traders just maverick loners, or a product of a high-rolling banking culture that's out of control? ..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBqd4HN9igo
Quote from Ed Breen:
Oldtime, I didn't write anything that could objectively be interpreted to mean that I didn't care about your fictional, only partly articulated and defined 'person' in NJ who you made up for argument sake. I suggested that your argument was disjointed and the connection you appeared to be attempting was not logical, then I asked you a question about your 'NJ man' to see if I could understand your construct. You didn't answer my question; instead of developing further detail about your 'sim guy' you simply started making stuff up about me and then about economists and then you started making up stuff about your view of economics. You disregarded all that I shared with you about wealth, assets, capital, labor, investment and growth and did not respond to those ideas. You changed the subject and made conclusory statements about fictional characters that were not supported by any factual analysis. I guess the structure I offered you was not as much fun as your imagination and prejudices.
Do you think the guys who are not building houses for rich people now are better off? You didn't mention whether these apparently oppressed home construction workers used to get paid or even whether they liked their work. Do you think they are liberated by unemployment...freed from stifling servitude? In your view as creator, did they purhaps become self actualized in thier new liberation from the persecution of employment as street poets and philosphers of a new found utopia?...or are they in the food stamp chart, swapping four roses?
that is one seriously eloquent rant
Oldtime, I understand anti-matter. Anti-logic is not anti-matter. The term 'anti-matter' is an accepted and defined term in discourse that describes a real physical substance or phenomenon, but that is a matter for a different thread, or 'string' if you will. In contrast your made up term, 'anti-logic', must be understood as the same as the accepted and defined term in discourse, 'ill-logic.' Ill-logic means 'nonsense,' or if I may explain further, 'bullshit' driven by uninformed prejudice and personal attack. It is where people go when they don't want to accept the inevitable conclusions of a logical argument.
I agree that college does not prepare you very well to understand economics. They have moved the finance out of it to business school and they pretend that it is not involved in sociology and politics. What they teach as economics in the most selective universities is an obviously failed paradigm. So, I believe that a college economics education is a handicap...stay away from it. If you have interest, study philosophy, finance and maybe history of economics instead. You could also just figure out yourelf by starting a business and pay attention to how normal people respond to incentives with regard to their money, or lack of it.
Your average sim guy who makes $49,000 nominal dollars now does not really exist. He is a simulation created by a model. His description includes young, old, immigrant, men, women, fourth generation farmers, high school dropouts, Phd's driving taxis and college dropouts writing code. It includes delivery men and those who own butcher shops, waiters and bar owners, etc., etc. Each of these and all the many more are individual children of God. They are real people with real attributes, intellectual capital, family and social support or lack of it, an experiencial history, a present situation made up of past choices and present choices and dreams or lack of dreams about the future. They try to cope with the larger world that effects them directly and thier choices in a more attenuated way. There is no such thing as an average man; it is a static snapshop of no man that confuses more than it explains.
With that said, the way you increase wages is to combine capital with labor. You invest money to support the work that you are doing so that you can do it better and bigger. The combination of capital to labor raises productivity and wages. The way real people accumulate wealth is to that they use part of their production (wages) to invest in real assets. Ultimately all wealth is a product of risk. This is why it matters that economics and policy makers confuse GDP consumption with real growth. They don't notice the condition where our policies have encouraged debt formation and consumption at the expense of investment. As investment as percent of the GDP has declined from about 55% in the 1950's through today where it appears to be currently running at about 12% we get a picture of an economy that is no longer investing in its asset base and so its asset base is aging and declining. Investment is being made offshort and capital is flowing to labor in other countries. We fight the reduction in the standard of living by counter policies that encourage debt formation (spending future production without investing to make it happen) for continued consumption until we run out of credit. During the whole unfortunate process the real wage of wage owners declines through insideous and confusing inflation.
The problem is that the wage earners are sold a bunch of anit-logic bullshit by purveyors of ideological prejudice and misinformation like you, so they have no idea how the policies that make it hard to apply capital to labor in the U.S. is reducing thier income. You would have them believe they can just get wealth from the rich, without understanding that as soon as you say that, you weaken the expectation of the possessory right to the assets which make them and you rich...so you immediately devalue in present time that which you plan to take in the future. You make yourself poorer right away. You immediately make your situation worse and increase the reasons and actions that drive capital away from labor.
I agree that college does not prepare you very well to understand economics. They have moved the finance out of it to business school and they pretend that it is not involved in sociology and politics. What they teach as economics in the most selective universities is an obviously failed paradigm. So, I believe that a college economics education is a handicap...stay away from it. If you have interest, study philosophy, finance and maybe history of economics instead. You could also just figure out yourelf by starting a business and pay attention to how normal people respond to incentives with regard to their money, or lack of it.
Your average sim guy who makes $49,000 nominal dollars now does not really exist. He is a simulation created by a model. His description includes young, old, immigrant, men, women, fourth generation farmers, high school dropouts, Phd's driving taxis and college dropouts writing code. It includes delivery men and those who own butcher shops, waiters and bar owners, etc., etc. Each of these and all the many more are individual children of God. They are real people with real attributes, intellectual capital, family and social support or lack of it, an experiencial history, a present situation made up of past choices and present choices and dreams or lack of dreams about the future. They try to cope with the larger world that effects them directly and thier choices in a more attenuated way. There is no such thing as an average man; it is a static snapshop of no man that confuses more than it explains.
With that said, the way you increase wages is to combine capital with labor. You invest money to support the work that you are doing so that you can do it better and bigger. The combination of capital to labor raises productivity and wages. The way real people accumulate wealth is to that they use part of their production (wages) to invest in real assets. Ultimately all wealth is a product of risk. This is why it matters that economics and policy makers confuse GDP consumption with real growth. They don't notice the condition where our policies have encouraged debt formation and consumption at the expense of investment. As investment as percent of the GDP has declined from about 55% in the 1950's through today where it appears to be currently running at about 12% we get a picture of an economy that is no longer investing in its asset base and so its asset base is aging and declining. Investment is being made offshort and capital is flowing to labor in other countries. We fight the reduction in the standard of living by counter policies that encourage debt formation (spending future production without investing to make it happen) for continued consumption until we run out of credit. During the whole unfortunate process the real wage of wage owners declines through insideous and confusing inflation.
The problem is that the wage earners are sold a bunch of anit-logic bullshit by purveyors of ideological prejudice and misinformation like you, so they have no idea how the policies that make it hard to apply capital to labor in the U.S. is reducing thier income. You would have them believe they can just get wealth from the rich, without understanding that as soon as you say that, you weaken the expectation of the possessory right to the assets which make them and you rich...so you immediately devalue in present time that which you plan to take in the future. You make yourself poorer right away. You immediately make your situation worse and increase the reasons and actions that drive capital away from labor.
After reading 15 pages of rubbish here is what I want to say
If you take out the reserve currency status of USD, USA will be a third world country overnight
In other words, if every country in the world can and would only use their own currency not some piece of paper printed in Mexico stamped somewhere in USA and signed in DC but is used in all 193 countries of the world.
But this will never happen. Because 7BN people of the world is brainwashed everyday by an American dream and will never buy the idea of American dollar being a piece of paper and never really holds value. They were forced and brainwashed to believe that American dollar has a value.
As a result, the whole world lives in an illusion. As long as people do not wake up, USA will not bankrupt. It will slowly get poorer because there is a limit of how much you can borrow and how much you can print. Once USA hits that limit which seems like we did, then the next step to keep up the American living standards high will be to start a war against Iran and next country will be who knows maybe North Korea. Anything to keep up the illusion.
Alas, of all the 15 pages nobody talks about this paper illusion.
If you take out the reserve currency status of USD, USA will be a third world country overnight
In other words, if every country in the world can and would only use their own currency not some piece of paper printed in Mexico stamped somewhere in USA and signed in DC but is used in all 193 countries of the world.
But this will never happen. Because 7BN people of the world is brainwashed everyday by an American dream and will never buy the idea of American dollar being a piece of paper and never really holds value. They were forced and brainwashed to believe that American dollar has a value.
As a result, the whole world lives in an illusion. As long as people do not wake up, USA will not bankrupt. It will slowly get poorer because there is a limit of how much you can borrow and how much you can print. Once USA hits that limit which seems like we did, then the next step to keep up the American living standards high will be to start a war against Iran and next country will be who knows maybe North Korea. Anything to keep up the illusion.
Alas, of all the 15 pages nobody talks about this paper illusion.
I agree, couldn't have said it better myself. All I'm asking is that the true measure of wealth of a country is it's average income from the billionaires all the way down to the food stamp recipient. Maybe you and I agree, because average income has been pretty stagnant since about 1970 and that is when investment started declining and consumption started increasing. I'm not sure why you think I care how much the wealthiest earn or why you think I want it. As a matter of fact, when they earn more it bumps up the average. So back to my original question, wouldn't average income be a better indicator than what we use now?Quote from Ed Breen:
Oldtime, I understand anti-matter. Anti-logic is not anti-matter. The term 'anti-matter' is an accepted and defined term in discourse that describes a real physical substance or phenomenon, but that is a matter for a different thread, or 'string' if you will. In contrast your made up term, 'anti-logic', must be understood as the same as the accepted and defined term in discourse, 'ill-logic.' Ill-logic means 'nonsense,' or if I may explain further, 'bullshit' driven by uninformed prejudice and personal attack. It is where people go when they don't want to accept the inevitable conclusions of a logical argument.
I agree that college does not prepare you very well to understand economics. They have moved the finance out of it to business school and they pretend that it is not involved in sociology and politics. What they teach as economics in the most selective universities is an obviously failed paradigm. So, I believe that a college economics education is a handicap...stay away from it. If you have interest, study philosophy, finance and maybe history of economics instead. You could also just figure out yourelf by starting a business and pay attention to how normal people respond to incentives with regard to their money, or lack of it.
Your average sim guy who makes $49,000 nominal dollars now does not really exist. He is a simulation created by a model. His description includes young, old, immigrant, men, women, fourth generation farmers, high school dropouts, Phd's driving taxis and college dropouts writing code. It includes delivery men and those who own butcher shops, waiters and bar owners, etc., etc. Each of these and all the many more are individual children of God. They are real people with real attributes, intellectual capital, family and social support or lack of it, an experiencial history, a present situation made up of past choices and present choices and dreams or lack of dreams about the future. They try to cope with the larger world that effects them directly and thier choices in a more attenuated way. There is no such thing as an average man; it is a static snapshop of no man that confuses more than it explains.
With that said, the way you increase wages is to combine capital with labor. You invest money to support the work that you are doing so that you can do it better and bigger. The combination of capital to labor raises productivity and wages. The way real people accumulate wealth is to that they use part of their production (wages) to invest in real assets. Ultimately all wealth is a product of risk. This is why it matters that economics and policy makers confuse GDP consumption with real growth. They don't notice the condition where our policies have encouraged debt formation and consumption at the expense of investment. As investment as percent of the GDP has declined from about 55% in the 1950's through today where it appears to be currently running at about 12% we get a picture of an economy that is no longer investing in its asset base and so its asset base is aging and declining. Investment is being made offshort and capital is flowing to labor in other countries. We fight the reduction in the standard of living by counter policies that encourage debt formation (spending future production without investing to make it happen) for continued consumption until we run out of credit. During the whole unfortunate process the real wage of wage owners declines through insideous and confusing inflation.
The problem is that the wage earners are sold a bunch of anit-logic bullshit by purveyors of ideological prejudice and misinformation like you, so they have no idea how the policies that make it hard to apply capital to labor in the U.S. is reducing thier income. You would have them believe they can just get wealth from the rich, without understanding that as soon as you say that, you weaken the expectation of the possessory right to the assets which make them and you rich...so you immediately devalue in present time that which you plan to take in the future. You make yourself poorer right away. You immediately make your situation worse and increase the reasons and actions that drive capital away from labor.
Average income is not a good indicator because there is too much noise in number. I don't want to discuss how to make a better average number by reducing to only employees and then looking at different skill groups because in the end it will only tell you about labor and nothing about wealth.
If you followed what I was talking about with regards to wealth you should understand that define wealth as aggregate asset accumulation...growth in aggregate assets if you are talking about the wealth of a nation and growth of individual assets if you are talking about he wealth of an individual.
You are talking about wages as if wages are an indication of wealth. Here is where metrics again contribute to the general confusion. In the popular media income is discussed as if all income is wages. The data base for the income discussion and the basis for all the income disparity measures is the income data collected and provided by the IRS. What people don't pay attention to is that IRS data is what they call 'AGI,' adjusted gross income.' Adjusted gross income is materially different from what we normally think of as wealth income. AGI includes wages, interest, dividends, capital gains, rents, debt foregiveness, etc. This would not create the huge distortion it does if the AGI data was comprised of indivduals earning money but what compounds the confusion is that Sub S, Partnership, LLC, LLP and Sole Proprietorship income is included in the AGI data. 68% of all U.S. Corporations are Sub -S corporations and all this corporate income is included in the AGI data that people think is wage earnings. Partnership, LLC and LLP contributes to the confusion but it is not as big as the Sub S distortion. So, what people are calling the top 1% of income earners is mostly corporate earnings and the sale of businessess. The actual individuals who are in the 1% is just the super rich wage earners...who are not smart enough or don't care enough not to have wages over Imillion (they could get paid other ways), and the entertainers and athletes who are best served with mega saleries sheltered in other ways. Much of the Sub-S income is accounted as income even though it has to stay in the corporation to fund operations and growth, even though it is not paid to the owners...who have to pay the tax on it anyway.
Popular discussion of corporate income is likewise distorted because it only includes C-Corp data which is a small subset of total corporate income, much of which as I said is reported as individual income. So, pundits will tell you that only 9% of revenues come from corporations becuase they use the IRS data that only includes C-Corp data....and they will tell you what the 1% earns but more that half the 1% income is really corporate income.
Because of these confusions I think it is simpler to look at aggregate assets. It would enlightening for policy makers to take the Sub-S, LLP and LLC income out of individual income and recalculate the top 1%.
I think I am getting too wonky into this and probabaly a lot of people are bored with this now, so I am going to let it drop. It has been fun engaging you and using you as a foil to present ideas and play with words, thanks.
If you followed what I was talking about with regards to wealth you should understand that define wealth as aggregate asset accumulation...growth in aggregate assets if you are talking about the wealth of a nation and growth of individual assets if you are talking about he wealth of an individual.
You are talking about wages as if wages are an indication of wealth. Here is where metrics again contribute to the general confusion. In the popular media income is discussed as if all income is wages. The data base for the income discussion and the basis for all the income disparity measures is the income data collected and provided by the IRS. What people don't pay attention to is that IRS data is what they call 'AGI,' adjusted gross income.' Adjusted gross income is materially different from what we normally think of as wealth income. AGI includes wages, interest, dividends, capital gains, rents, debt foregiveness, etc. This would not create the huge distortion it does if the AGI data was comprised of indivduals earning money but what compounds the confusion is that Sub S, Partnership, LLC, LLP and Sole Proprietorship income is included in the AGI data. 68% of all U.S. Corporations are Sub -S corporations and all this corporate income is included in the AGI data that people think is wage earnings. Partnership, LLC and LLP contributes to the confusion but it is not as big as the Sub S distortion. So, what people are calling the top 1% of income earners is mostly corporate earnings and the sale of businessess. The actual individuals who are in the 1% is just the super rich wage earners...who are not smart enough or don't care enough not to have wages over Imillion (they could get paid other ways), and the entertainers and athletes who are best served with mega saleries sheltered in other ways. Much of the Sub-S income is accounted as income even though it has to stay in the corporation to fund operations and growth, even though it is not paid to the owners...who have to pay the tax on it anyway.
Popular discussion of corporate income is likewise distorted because it only includes C-Corp data which is a small subset of total corporate income, much of which as I said is reported as individual income. So, pundits will tell you that only 9% of revenues come from corporations becuase they use the IRS data that only includes C-Corp data....and they will tell you what the 1% earns but more that half the 1% income is really corporate income.
Because of these confusions I think it is simpler to look at aggregate assets. It would enlightening for policy makers to take the Sub-S, LLP and LLC income out of individual income and recalculate the top 1%.
I think I am getting too wonky into this and probabaly a lot of people are bored with this now, so I am going to let it drop. It has been fun engaging you and using you as a foil to present ideas and play with words, thanks.