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The Wealth Gap

Does it matter Millionaire - Billionaire?


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The other wealth gap

"From an economic perspective, the most dramatic wealth gap is between middling millionaires, who have seen only modest gains, and the booming billionaires, who now seem to defy economic gravity. It's between the guy making $300,000, who still feels poor, and the man who made $37 million a day for a year. Both are lumped together by politicians, the media and even economists as "the rich" or "the 1 percent," who are gaining at the expense of everyone else.


The big winners are those in the top 0.01 percent. These folks, who have a net worth of more than $100 million. How are they doing it? The top 0.01 percent are stock-market winners—CEOs, bankers, entrepreneurs—who are riding financial markets to outsize gains. The rest of the top 1 percent are often mere wage earners."



Does this matter in your opinion of who's really "leveraging" the system in their favor?

I'm not getting into whether.. it's fair or not.. to be able to use your incredible wealth ($1 billion+) to manipulate markets, but rather> do you see a difference in the gaps?
 
I don't understand the question.
 
Nobody should be allowed to have a billion dollars. We need an upper-upper tax bracket of 100%.
 
I don't understand the question.

Is it fair to lump the Top .01% in with the rest of the other Top 1%?

One group are (billionaires) stock-market winners—CEOs, bankers, entrepreneurs—who are riding financial markets to outsize gains. The rest of the top 1 percent are (millionaires) often mere wage earners.
 
Is it fair to lump the Top .01% in with the rest of the other Top 1%?

One group are (billionaires) stock-market winners—CEOs, bankers, entrepreneurs—who are riding financial markets to outsize gains. The rest of the top 1 percent are (millionaires) often mere wage earners.
but in what context? You already ruled out fairness.
 
That's too much money for one person.

That much money is power. I'm not in favor of too much power in the hands of only a few.

The Bill Gates' and Warren Buffet's of the world should be capped at like 50 million.

You still don't explain why you think that way. What's the basis for your thinking?? You already offered up your opinion, but what I'd like to know is what it is that created that opinion. Why do you think that there should be a cap on personal wealth? If it's power, then you're wrong, because you can have massive power without wealth, so limiting wealth does not limit power.
 
As a European, I will offer a few words of caution to you Americans as well.

What happens if you let too much money accumulate in the hands of a few is you end up with aristocracies. Generational wealth. Like we have in Europe.

You may never give them titles like Lords and Earls and such, but you will have them all the same. These people don't work for a living. They live off their inheritance. They buy political power and they are above the law.

These people are a cancer to society, and you should stop it from happening before it infects your whole society.
 
You still don't explain why you think that way. What's the basis for your thinking?? You already offered up your opinion, but what I'd like to know is what it is that created that opinion. Why do you think that there should be a cap on personal wealth? If it's power, then you're wrong, because you can have massive power without wealth, so limiting wealth does not limit power.

Because I'm European. In Europe, we made that mistake generations ago. Today, we have aristocracies. Generational wealth. These people don't work for a living. They leave that up to the "working class" (so called for a reason).

The aristocrats live off their inheritance, the value of their land, and their inherited stock assets. They buy political power and they are above the law.

These people are a cancer to society, and you should stop it from happening before it infects your whole society.

What makes America great is that it's a land of opportunity where anyone can make it. Rags to riches. You are losing that.
 
Nobody should be allowed to have a billion dollars. We need an upper-upper tax bracket of 100%.

How does someone having that much money make your life worse? Don't tell make up things like they corrupt the political system. Just tell me how your life changes today if we seize their money.
 
but in what context? You already ruled out fairness.

I only ruled out fairness in the way free markets work, not wanting the thread to devolve into a Capitalism argument. But whether there's a difference between the two in a wealth gap comparison, as earners?
 
As a European, I will offer a few words of caution to you Americans as well.

What happens if you let too much money accumulate in the hands of a few is you end up with aristocracies. Generational wealth. Like we have in Europe.

You may never give them titles like Lords and Earls and such, but you will have them all the same. These people don't work for a living. They live off their inheritance. They buy political power and they are above the law.

These people are a cancer to society, and you should stop it from happening before it infects your whole society.

If they are doing but living off their inheritance, eventually they'll run out of money. Maybe not in this generation, but someplace down the line, the trust fund go into over-draw and they'll end up selling their family jewels to pay the light bill. Besides, what harm does it do you if they had an ancestor who worked his/her butt off so that they could allow their kids/grand-kids/great-grand-kids, etc. to live without having to work?? Id' love to be able to hand my son a $10,000,000,000 trust fund so that he could whatever he wanted to do and not have to keep flipping burgers for a living. I'd love to see my grand-child (not sure if it's a boy or a girl yet) grow up to spend his/her life traveling the world and seeing everything I never got to see and not have to punch a timeclock every day while missing out on seeing my great-grand-children grow up. What's the harm in that??
 
How does someone having that much money make your life worse? Don't tell make up things like they corrupt the political system. Just tell me how your life changes today if we seize their money.

Less collusion in the stock market

Fewer paid-for presidents and senators (Kennedy family, Bush family, etc).

Fewer douchbags driving ferraris 130mph on the freeway at 2am and not going to jail for it.

That sort of thing.
 
If they are doing but living off their inheritance, eventually they'll run out of money. Maybe not in this generation, but someplace down the line, the trust fund go into over-draw and they'll end up selling their family jewels to pay the light bill. Besides, what harm does it do you if they had an ancestor who worked his/her butt off so that they could allow their kids/grand-kids/great-grand-kids, etc. to live without having to work?? Id' love to be able to hand my son a $10,000,000,000 trust fund so that he could whatever he wanted to do and not have to keep flipping burgers for a living. I'd love to see my grand-child (not sure if it's a boy or a girl yet) grow up to spend his/her life traveling the world and seeing everything I never got to see and not have to punch a timeclock every day while missing out on seeing my great-grand-children grow up. What's the harm in that??


Jesus what a naive country you are.

Read some history books. There have been entire societies ruled by aristocrats. They take power because they have the means. The United States is in danger of becoming that today.

The biggest thing is that someone with a billion dollars to blow can use that to buy political favors. When it comes from someone who hasn't worked a day in his life, then you get poor leadership.

The good thing about America is that new money always works hard. Old money hardly ever does.
 
It doesn't matter either way to me. The economy isn't a zero-sum game, and the fact that one individual has millions of dollars doesn't mean that others have less than they would have had otherwise.
 
I only ruled out fairness in the way free markets work, not wanting the thread to devolve into a Capitalism argument. But whether there's a difference between the two in a wealth gap comparison, as earners?
So you're asking if billionaires have more leverage than millionaires?
 
As a European, I will offer a few words of caution to you Americans as well.

What happens if you let too much money accumulate in the hands of a few is you end up with aristocracies. Generational wealth. Like we have in Europe.

You may never give them titles like Lords and Earls and such, but you will have them all the same. These people don't work for a living. They live off their inheritance. They buy political power and they are above the law.

I think in Britain alone, 96% of the land is owned by just 3% of the people. I'm sure the numbers are similar in other countries. As you already mentioned, this plays a huge role in the distribution of wealth and power over the economy and government.


These people are a cancer to society, and you should stop it from happening before it infects your whole society.

It has infected society since the dawn of agriculture. When we privatize the commons we take the wealth of the Earth from everyone else to benefit just a few. Through land dues, we can reverse the widening gap and return the wealth of the Earth to all.
 
I only ruled out fairness in the way free markets work, not wanting the thread to devolve into a Capitalism argument. But whether there's a difference between the two in a wealth gap comparison, as earners?

Many have become Millionaires from well run businesses that used laborers to add value to some product. They are/were making jobs. Billionaires make money by shuffling paper. Bonds, stocks, hedges, warrnats, futures, etc. and if they create a demand for any honest labor, I don't see it. An example is the recent "too big to fail" bank bailout. Trillions of dollars went to these banks. Did that create jobs? No. Why wasn't the money targetted to labor intensive recovery options? I'd guess political influence was used by these same "too big to fail" banks. The power of big money. I've seen discussion of EU aristocracy on the board and I believe we have been there a long time. JD Rockefeller had a billion dollars in `1913 and the US budget was $813 million. Who had the power. Rockefeller had sons that were also good businessmen and do politics, banks, energy corporations, etc. David Rockefeller is alleged to be the driving force behind tha NWO. Aristocracy?
 
The issue isn't low level rich people, it's the uber rich, the less than 1% who own most of the country's (and world's) capital.

Now that the plutocracy of the western world have run out of places to colonize, they're colonizing their own people: the middle class of America.

It's a sick twist of fate, yet somehow fitting.
 
It doesn't matter either way to me. The economy isn't a zero-sum game, and the fact that one individual has millions of dollars doesn't mean that others have less than they would have had otherwise.

Head of Nail, meet Hammer.

In a society marked by free trade, your income is a measurement of how much benefit you have provided to other people, which they have paid you back for in the form of cash. Limiting someone's income is attempting to limit how much good someone can do for others.

The problem doesn't come from the accumulation of great wealth, but from the confluence of wealth and government. Bill Gates (mentioned earlier) is an excellent example. Microsoft spent nothing (roughly) on politicians.... until her competitors realized that they could use government to seek a competitive advantage. One Justice Department lawsuit later, Microsoft now owns half the Senate.

When you start legislating buying and selling, the first things bought and sold will be legislators. If you want to get the business out of government, you have to first get the government out of business.
 
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It doesn't matter either way to me. The economy isn't a zero-sum game, and the fact that one individual has millions of dollars doesn't mean that others have less than they would have had otherwise.

Your assumption is that because wealth can be created, then it must infinite. The problem is that wealth has to come from a resource that is not infinite. This is most obvious in the property market where the supply of land is fixed.

Furthermore, if you oppose the Federal Reserve like 99% libertarians, you'd realize how silly your claim is. That money is based on debt and the People become poorer because of it.
 
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Your assumption is that because wealth can be created, then it must infinite. The problem with that view is that wealth has to come from a resource that is not infinite.

That doesn't change the statement that I made. There is not a pot of money sitting around waiting to be divided up. That is quite obvious as evidenced by the perpetual printing and manipulation of money to influence our economy.
 
That doesn't change the statement that I made. There is not a pot of money sitting around waiting to be divided up. That is quite obvious as evidenced by the perpetual printing and manipulation of money to influence our economy.

I don't see how the manipulation of currency proves there is no zero-sum game. You could have all the money in the world, but it would mean nothing if I owned the Earth and its resources.
 
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