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Income disparity ain't an evil.

bave said:
Show me how carry cost has anything to do with profit or loss from a capital asset.

Good lord.
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I said interest in case you forgot. Interest paid is deducted from gross profit.
 
Robertinfremont said:
I said interest in case you forgot. Interest paid is deducted from gross profit.
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First, in finance, carry cost is the same thing as interest. It simply has a broader definition.

Second, interest paid is not deducted from your profit on an asset. Using the home example, do you get to add your accrued interest expense to your cost basis when you determine your profit/loss from the sale? No, you do not, not ever.

Next.
 
KLATTU said:
If you bought 10 shares of stock at $10 each and the price goes down to 5, didn't you just lose 50 bucks?
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Yes I did, but the money did not just vanish. The $10 is sitting right in the pocket of the person you bought the stock from. It did not go away. The money did not disappear.

You buy an ounce of silver for $20 and the price drops to $15, the $5 lost did not vanish either. It went to the guy you bought it from. Stock, comic books, commodities like gold, or anything else, it is the same way. Value may have been lost, but value is not real, it is an estimate. The actual money spent went into the pocket of the person who sold it,it did not go away.

Look back to the reference I made in selling a car. You advertise a car for $2,500 and sell it for $2,000. The $500 did not vanish, it never existed in the first place. You did not loose $500, it never existed in the first place.
 
bave said:
This is a silly notion. The money was in fact lost because the value of the underlying enterprise has evidently declined by 50%. If I sell my house for $100k when I purchased it for $200k, I didn't hand the new buyer $100k, I lost $100k that vanished.
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And exactly how often does that happen, unless you were unwise enough to buy a house at the height of a bubble in the first place?

And once again, the money did not vanish! Do not confuse your taking a personal loss with the money ceasing to exist. This is why you continue to fail understanding this.
 
JasperL said:
We can look around the world at revolutions, and they don't come when the 'masses' are happy but when the masses perceive an injustice. If there are a small share living in gated communities, and millions more unable to fend for the basics, I'm not sure that increases long term prosperity. Taking care of the poor, in other words, seems a cost of the system as a whole. Do away with that, and you risk the whole game.
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And exactly how many revolutions short of the removal of Communism did people do better afterwards than they did before?

And why is it my responsibility to take care of the poor? I would rather give them the opportunity to take care of themselves. And that is the biggest difference.

I have absolutely no interest in being the babysitter or caretaker for those that do not want to work. And this is not a new argument. A very wise man 2,000 years ago said that there would always be poor, and absolutely nothing has changed between now and then.
 
Robertinfremont said:
So you claim today you spent $200,000 and sold for $100,000. How much did you spend of the $200,000 towards interest?
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Was the $100,000 loss the result of failure to maintain the house or market failure? In the first case the buyer would have to spend to restore the value while in the latter the value would increase as the market recovered.
 
iguanaman said:
He is selling his commodity to the highest bidder. Actors salaries have nothing to do with workers who have no clout when it comes to wages. They need to feed, house and clothe their families and their bosses know it.
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If workers have no clout, then why don't greedy corporations pay only the legal minimum wage to all of their workers?


"Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is like asking six-year-olds where babies come from."

-Thomas Sowell
 
Individual said:
The unemployment benefit amount for the "Never employed", regardless of the method used by the individual State, works out to be equal to 100% of their previous earnings, and unlike the actual previously employed person has no termination point.
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Government solves all problems for the right wing instead of Capitalism? There is no unemployment under true free market Capitalism, only underpayment.
 
Robertinfremont said:
You are barking up the wrong tree. You accept the poor want help. I do not accept that at all.
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lol. The Richest want more capital help than the Poor and you have no problem with that. Corporate welfare is alive and well for the Rich. The right wing only complains about "true Christian morality" for the Poor.

CEO compensation has grown 940% since 1978
Typical worker compensation has risen only 12% during that time
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Oozlefinch said:
And exactly how often does that happen, unless you were unwise enough to buy a house at the height of a bubble in the first place?

And once again, the money did not vanish! Do not confuse your taking a personal loss with the money ceasing to exist. This is why you continue to fail understanding this.
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No, the money was lost, wealth destroyed. Wealth is created and destroyed all the time, it doens't mean someone else took it.

Lots of people have lost money on real estate.
 
Oozlefinch said:
And exactly how many revolutions short of the removal of Communism did people do better afterwards than they did before?
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Apparently you're ignoring this country?

But it doesn't matter how well you think the people did post-revolution, just that they HAPPEN with some regularity. My point is political and social stability are essential for long term growth, and we have it despite our problems, and that would be threatened if the kids literally begged on the side of the road for food, because they were starving, or poor workers couldn't get healthcare for their children. So it is in the interests of the plutocrats to keep the masses fed and taken care of to sustain the system that works so well for them.

And why is it my responsibility to take care of the poor? I would rather give them the opportunity to take care of themselves. And that is the biggest difference.

I have absolutely no interest in being the babysitter or caretaker for those that do not want to work. And this is not a new argument. A very wise man 2,000 years ago said that there would always be poor, and absolutely nothing has changed between now and then.
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Bottom line is your preferences don't matter all that much. Sure, you're selfish like the rest of us, and I'd rather pay no income taxes, but that's not how the system works, and the poor get to vote. And WWJD is say..."**** the poor, let them starve, let the kids go without healthcare, and the moms, and the dads, they're not MY problem!!"
 
Oozlefinch said:
Yes I did, but the money did not just vanish. The $10 is sitting right in the pocket of the person you bought the stock from. It did not go away. The money did not disappear.

You buy an ounce of silver for $20 and the price drops to $15, the $5 lost did not vanish either. It went to the guy you bought it from. Stock, comic books, commodities like gold, or anything else, it is the same way. Value may have been lost, but value is not real, it is an estimate. The actual money spent went into the pocket of the person who sold it,it did not go away.

Look back to the reference I made in selling a car. You advertise a car for $2,500 and sell it for $2,000. The $500 did not vanish, it never existed in the first place. You did not loose $500, it never existed in the first place.
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All you're saying is there are winners and losers. That's fine, but the losers suffered REAL LOSSES. In the housing crash, people saw their house drop by a third or more, and they either were out of pocket for the price, or were obligated on a loan on an asset that isn't worth what they paid. It's not much comfort to those on the losing side to point out that their loss was another person's gain, and it doesn't lessen the economic damage when the damage was widespread, but the gains concentrated in a few hands on Wall Street in a lot of cases.

We saw the result - the Great Recession, 700k jobs lost per month at the peak, millions in total jobs lost, etc. The economic pain from the Great Depression was also very real - my mother in law lived through it. She had to be sent to an orphanage because her parents could only care for two children and the three oldest were SOL. Are we supposed to pretend that didn't happen, because SOMEONE got the money from that inflated house?

So it's unclear what point you're trying to make. If it's that the system is rigged and the losses were widespread but the profits concentrated in a few hands at the top, OK, but you need to state it so we all understand it. As stated, you're doing a version of splitting hairs.
 
Oozlefinch said:
And exactly how often does that happen, unless you were unwise enough to buy a house at the height of a bubble in the first place?
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You can't bring up an example, have someone address it, then claim your example isn't meaningful because we don't often have great crashes like post the housing boom or the stock boom in the 1920s. And if you could predict bubbles with accuracy, you should have made $millions in 2007-2009 or so by shorting everything. Did you do that? VERY few did, and blaming people for not recognizing when their stock or other investment will drop is a different point than you're making, which is they didn't suffer a loss, or we can disregard it because SOMEONE had a gain.

And once again, the money did not vanish! Do not confuse your taking a personal loss with the money ceasing to exist. This is why you continue to fail understanding this.
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So what? What does understanding your hair splitting exercise contribute to our understanding of how an economy works. The losses WERE REAL.
 
danielpalos said:
lol. The Richest want more capital help than the Poor and you have no problem with that. Corporate welfare is alive and well for the Rich. The right wing only complains about "true Christian morality" for the Poor.
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Who told you that lie?
 
Early in life I found that living within ones means, reduced if not eliminated the necessity of making what could only be characterized as bad decisions.
The SOLUTION to the problem, IMO, is for government to gradually reduce subsidizing those who are found unable/unwilling to cease making poor decisions.
At some point government would then be able to cease entirely subsidizing such individuals, returning such aid to the private sector alone.
 
Individual said:
Early in life I found that living within ones means, reduced if not eliminated the necessity of making what could only be characterized as bad decisions.
The SOLUTION to the problem, IMO, is for government to gradually reduce subsidizing those who are found unable/unwilling to cease making poor decisions.
At some point government would then be able to cease entirely subsidizing such individuals, returning such aid to the private sector alone.
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How does that solve our homeless problem?
 
bave said:
No, the money was lost, wealth destroyed. Wealth is created and destroyed all the time, it doens't mean someone else took it.

Lots of people have lost money on real estate.
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That is known as speculation most times. And once again the money did not vanish. It remains just where it was when they bought the property. In the pocket of the person they bought it from.

Wealth does not exist until an item is transferred into currency. It is before then potential wealth at most. Potential, not real.

You keep skating around this, and still fail to comprehend the difference.
 
JasperL said:
Bottom line is your preferences don't matter all that much. Sure, you're selfish like the rest of us, and I'd rather pay no income taxes, but that's not how the system works, and the poor get to vote. And WWJD is say..."**** the poor, let them starve, let the kids go without healthcare, and the moms, and the dads, they're not MY problem!!"
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Once again, like so many you are projecting here. You are assuming that others all believe like you do, and also apparently anybody that does not is an enemy. And most of your political rant is just that, a rant that is meaningless other than to you.

Interesting you bring up Jesus actually. Because he said the following about the poor:

For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. - Matthew 26-11

Trust me, I was not just making things up when I talked about a wise man 2,000 years ago.

I do not say "to hell with them". However, I do say that I agree with a 17th century politician, in that "God helps those who help themselves". And the majority of the poor make horrible life choices. And until they do something to get themselves out of poverty, there is really nothing I can do to help them. It would be like giving a bucket to a person who's house is flooding, yet they are living in front of a leaking dike.
 
Individual said:
People need to begin learning how to stop such problems from occurring.
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Most of the "homeless problem" is entirely self-caused. Specifically drugs and mental illness, combined with the refusal to work.

I myself have a simple solution.

First, mandatory rehabilitation for those with a substance abuse problem. If they refuse to get clean, incarceration.

Second, mandatory hospitalization for those with mental illness.

There, I just eliminated at least 80% of the homeless problem. It really is that simple.

For most of the remaining 20%, simply mandate work programs. Want aid? Then you do some kind of work every week. Even if it is just picking up trash in city parks and along the roads. Cleaning graffiti, there is all kind of work out there. Want free food and shelter, you gotta work for it. Don't want to work, then enjoy your tent until it is hauled away like trash.
 
Individual said:
People need to begin learning how to stop such problems from occurring.
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Well, sure, they need to begin learning how to stop such problems from occurring, like figuring out how to not be mentally ill. That would be great! How do we teach the mentally ill to not-be mentally ill? Will telling them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps work? IME it doesn't work too well, but maybe you've seen it work in your travels.
 
Oozlefinch said:
That is known as speculation most times. And once again the money did not vanish. It remains just where it was when they bought the property. In the pocket of the person they bought it from.

Wealth does not exist until an item is transferred into currency. It is before then potential wealth at most. Potential, not real.

You keep skating around this, and still fail to comprehend the difference.
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Why does "wealth" exist when converted to currency, but not before? Currencies have often in world history become worthless, same as stocks and other investments. The value of a currency is arbitrary, if we're going to use your standard here, and can appreciate or depreciate (among other reasons) at the whim of the Fed. In the late 70s early 80s the Fed engineered a roughly 20% per year decline in the value of every dollar held. That land or house might have been a more stable store of "wealth" than those dollars the Fed was forcing to depreciate.

And a house is real "wealth." So is a share of stock which is a claim on a company with real assets, cash, other investments, receivables, buildings, products, etc and a flow of profits.

You're not making any sense, and your distinction between cash as real "wealth" and declaring other assets not wealth is frankly ignorant.
 
Oozlefinch said:
Once again, like so many you are projecting here. You are assuming that others all believe like you do, and also apparently anybody that does not is an enemy. And most of your political rant is just that, a rant that is meaningless other than to you.

Interesting you bring up Jesus actually. Because he said the following about the poor:

For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. - Matthew 26-11

Trust me, I was not just making things up when I talked about a wise man 2,000 years ago.
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Yes, I acknowledge that the poor will always be with us. That's to say nothing about how to take care of the poor, who WILL always be with us for all kinds of reasons. Frankly, there are lots who are disabled, or way below average in intelligence, who are mentally ill in some way, and more, and on their own cannot earn enough in any job to be not-poor. That is a given. Now what?

I do not say "to hell with them". However, I do say that I agree with a 17th century politician, in that "God helps those who help themselves". And the majority of the poor make horrible life choices. And until they do something to get themselves out of poverty, there is really nothing I can do to help them. It would be like giving a bucket to a person who's house is flooding, yet they are living in front of a leaking dike.
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Do something like what? Bottom line is we have lots of jobs that DO pay poorly, but need doing. So those jobs will be filled, they will pay a low wage, and that wage cannot sustain the basics, such as food, shelter, clothing and healthcare. Assume Bob is in that job and works his way to manager and he's no longer poor. OK, good for Bob. The job still exists and needs doing and will pay a low wage, etc. so what happens to Earl who takes that job?

BTW, you ignored my latest point on revolutions, but it still applies. What you do with Bob, and then Earl, or the poor who WILL always be with us goes a long, long way to establishing or not social and political stability. You might look at that clerk at the gas station with contempt - why didn't she pull herself up by her bootstraps and get a better job? Loser!! - but enough of them who can't get their kid healthcare, afford rent, etc. and you lose stability, and that threatens the entire system.
 
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