Re: UNCIVIL UNIONS

On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 12:50 AM, Karl Swenson <[email protected]> wrote:
> > But "working hard" is not a good enough justification for taking the lion's
> > share of the profits.
>
> **sure.  Only guys with blue collars deserve the fruits of their labours.
> Gotcha.  This is also class envy.

How on earth did you get that from what I wrote?  The blue collars
have just as much reason to justify their income based primarily on
how hard they worked as the white collars do; i.e. almost no reason at
all.  In case it isn't obvious, I think labor theory of value is
hogwash.

> **Your historical precedence was also dealing with a grossly different
> culture, society and economy.  If all things are equal, then they should
> actually be *equal*.  They are not.  Imposing a 90% rate now would be
> insane.

For what it's worth, that was the top marginal tax rate, and not the
effective tax rate.  There's an *enormous* difference.

>> Rich people spend and hire and buy stuff.
>
> Poor people also spend and buy stuff.  And they do so at a faster rate than
> do the rich.
>
> **so the poor people own companies?  Really?

Notice how I left out the word "hire" from my sentence.

This is by far my biggest pet peeve of trickle down thinking.  People
use it as justification that the only way to possibly increase
employment is to make nice to the aristocrats/capitalists so they can
create jobs.  This is unjustified nonsense.  (If this is not an
accurate depiction of what you believe, pardon me while I attack this
pet peeve strawman for a moment.)

Many, if not most, profitable businesses (large and small) are
supported not by one or two enormous patrons, but by hundreds or
thousands or millions of paying customers.  If you look at the top 20
US firms by market capitalization, most of them make most of their
revenue on consumer products which they sell to millions of customers,
rich and poor.  As an employee, I'd rather work for a firm that sold
$2 widgets to 100,000 customers per month or $20 widgets to 100,000
customers per year than one that sells $500,000 widgets to 4 customers
per year; there is more stability, and you can spend more time
perfecting your product rather than chasing the whims of one of your
clients.  The real estate bubble was inflated and burst largely on the
backs of tens of millions of middle class and working class wage
earners, with the net result being a massive arbitrage to the upper
class.

http://www.google.com/search?q=top+twenty+usa+market+capitalization

Just because I don't hire a nanny and a maid and a butler and a
chauffeur and build a factory town doesn't mean that I don't
contribute to job creation.  Oh wait... I *do* pay 1/4 of my day care
provider's income.  And 1/100th of my house cleaning service.  And
1/5000th of my local bagel shop.  And 1/10^9 of my mortgage servicer.
And so on.  I'm hardly poor, but the same principle works for any
income level.  Trickle down is not mutually exclusive with trickle up,
nor is it even necessarily the stronger of the two.

So, yes.  Poor people contribute to job creation.  And they tend to
recirculate their currency more quickly than the rich, who have more
leisure in choosing when and how to do so.  And they have far fewer
opportunities than the rich to engage in large scale arbitrage (which
creates little or no value, but simply transfers wealth to
themselves).

(and as an aside, yes.  some poor people own businesses.  and some of
those businesses even have employees.  although that's entirely
tangential to my point.)

-- 
Nick

-- 
dadl-ot mailing list
http://mail.thehood.us/mailman/listinfo/dadl-ot_thehood.us
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.music.dadl.ot