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.

**I don’t, at least not to a degree.  I think people who earn something are
entitled to it.  Period.

>> 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.

**and that is a pretty critical distinction isn’t it?  Poor people do indeed
spend, but on more basic stuff.  Like them or not, rich people buy more
things.  They also hire people to do things too.  We can envy them all we
want, but we need them too.

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. 

**make nice?  Hogwash.  Being sensible is not making nice.

**granted the loopholes likely are, and there is plenty of improvement to be
made there.  But if giving them the tax rates they have now is making nice,
then raising them must be punishment?  Is that any more justified?

 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.)

**have a go.  Anyone who thinks we should kiss their asses is on their own.

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.

**sure, but then again, that would exclude manufactures like Boeing, who
sell billion dollar things to a few customers but hire tens of thousands to
do it, wouldn’t it?

**Is a yacht manufacturer that much different than a locomotive manufacture?

  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.

**You forgot to mention that it was done at least in part because we wanted
to provide opportunity to those who could not afford it and those markers
came due.  



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.

**fair enough.  There must be a free flowing trade cycle.  Your support of
that coffee shop also pays some millionaire a bonus for managing a
successful corporation.  We are all tied to together.


So, yes.  Poor people contribute to job creation.

**yes, but only indirectly, and that is a substantive difference.


  And they tend to
recirculate their currency more quickly than the rich, who have more
leisure in choosing when and how to do so. 

**yes, but poor people are often recirculating what is essentially phantom
currency.  Money given by the government in entitlements provides a false
basis of support for the economy and a trap as well.  The more the poor
depend on it, the less likely they will get off it.


 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).

**well, sure.  We cannot avoid the fact that rich people are you know, rich.
But that is not to say that a poor person has to stay poor.  Many rise from
the ashes to become successful, but they are less likely to when the bottom
iis so cushioned.

(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.)

**then maybe the definitions matter. What would you define as poor, and what
manner of business would qualify?


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