Re: UNCIVIL UNIONS

>In case it isn't obvious, I think labor theory of value is

hogwash.<

Only when it comes to actual selling price.  But on a small scale it has 
everything to do with asking price.  IOW if I create something the labor theory 
of value is very much a factor in setting the price.  IOOW, sellers are Marxist, 
buyers are Smithists.  



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

IIRC, eliminating the discrepancy in those was what accounted for the increase 
in tax revenues after a decrease in rates during the Reagan era.  Rates went 
down but many loopholes were closed. 


But don't you admit that the higher the tax rate the more effort, those subject 
to that rate, expend to avoid it.  The key is figuring out what the rate is at 
which attempts to avoid it aren't worth, (or perceived as worth), the cost.


>> 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.<<

Poor buy what at a faster rate than the rich?  Do you have a source for that?  
The poor may by disposable diapers at a faster rate, (I believe statistics show 
that the poor have higher birth rate than the rich), but what else?  The rich by 
big ticket items at a much faster rate than the poor, and even if they buy fewer 
products, (for the sake of argument), they are spending more money on the 
products they buy.  



>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.<

I think you are ignoring the economic reality of suppliers - ie those business 
that don't sell retail products but create/sell products that are part of a 
retail product - and underestimating the number of employers that at the 500k/4 
ratio.  The best example I can think of is the auto industry.  You hear about 
the big three as if they were the auto business.  What you don't hear about is 
the hundreds/thousands of suppliers, some rather small, who make products that 
go into the cars that the big three sell.  I don't know what there margins are 
compared to the big three but I do know they have far less of a cushion and 
operate in much more of a hand to mouth manner.  At those smaller economies of 
scale marginal rates, labor costs, etc. have everything to do with how many they 
hire


>Trickle down is not mutually exclusive with trickle up,<

I'll buy that.

>..nor is it even necessarily the stronger of the two.<

Not as sure about that one.  In a true free market system I think common sense 
tells us that trickle down is stronger.  The problem we have is that we aren't 
operating in a true free market system.     When you think of it the govt has 
become to wall street what the Vichy French were to the Germans, (notice I 
avoided a nazi reference).  



>So, yes.  Poor people contribute to job creation.<

Well that's kind of a tautology don't you think? Consumers 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.<

Again what is your source for that?   It seems like you are confusing marginal 
spending with actual spending.  Obviously the poor are going to spend *more* of 
*their* pie because their pie is smaller, but that doesn't mean they are 
spending more, or faster, than the rich.  Common sense would tell you that the 
rich have higher daily/weekly/monthly/yearly budgets than the poor, so I don't 
see how your assertion can be true.


>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).<

Yes, the rich have more discretionary income than the poor.  That's hardly a new 
flash, but hardly something to condemn them for either.  I'm 100% in agreement 
with the evils, excesses, abuses of wall street/banking/investment firms, etc.  
But using the term "the rich" as a synonym for those folks sounds like it is 
rooted in class envy as opposed to an argument against injustice.  


Mike F.

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