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The Wealth Gap

Does it matter Millionaire - Billionaire?

  • Total voters
    42
Peter Grimm said:
I love how people mouth off over the internet. What you said here is something you could only get away with given the anonymity of the internet.
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I am not a billionaire and I don't worry about your anti rich rants

so what was I going to say?

but you are no right leaning libertarian. No R-L would ever support the government having the power to confiscate wealth
 
TurtleDude said:
I am not a billionaire and I don't worry about your anti rich rants

so what was I going to say?

but you are no right leaning libertarian. No R-L would ever support the government having the power to confiscate wealth
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That's right, I'm all for millionaires. I'm all for the guy that owns his own business, works hard, and wants to buy a beamer and a rolex and live in a nice house. When you start getting up to a billion that's just excessive. Nobody needs their own island and private helicopter. That kind of wealth is not natural and it is seldom earned.

But the more interesting question you asked was whether the government should have the power to confiscate wealth. Actually, they do it every day in the form of taxes. I know because I just filed mine.

It seems to me that the power of taxation is one of those things bestowed upon really any government.
 
lizzie said:
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.
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Yes and no. Wealth is finite. But we can create more of it over time. So the growth of wealth is not a zero-sum game, but the particular distribution of the total wealth at any given time is a zero-sum game.

You can visualize our total aggregate wealth as a pie that we can expand over time. Everybody controls a piece of that pie. There are two ways to increase the size of the piece that you control. Either A) you carve a larger piece for yourself by taking some of the pie that had previously belonged to your neighbors or you B) add some more dough and blueberries and claim that addition for yourself. In case A) your increase necessarily means that someone else's piece must shrink. In case B) your increase does not mean someone else's piece must necessarily shrink.

In a complex modern economy it's virtually impossible to determine if any particular person's income is a result of case A or case B. Probably it's almost always a mixture of the two. Certain types of work lean more one way than the other.
 
the_recruit said:
Wealth is finite.
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If wealth is finite and if we agree that there is a lot of wealth inequality in the world today, then imagine how awful the wealth inequality was during the Roman Era. All of that finite wealth spread amongst fewer people alive during that era and with only a few wealthy people, those guys must have each been as wealthy as Croesus.
 
ernst barkmann said:
true, but people who sit around see wealth as a single pie, with only so much pie to go around, therefore if you have more of the pie then anyone else, its not fair to them.

others see the ability to create as many pies as we want, therefore everyone has the opportunity to earn as big a slice of the pie as they dream.
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Yes, we can grow the pie. But it's just naive wishful thinking to say that we grow the pie at any rate we want. Look at history. There exist very real practical constraints on how quickly we can expand our overall wealth and standards of living.

Currently, not everyone in the world can spend their days living like a playboy billionaire touring the Caribbean on a personal yacht and jetskis. There simply isn't enough wealth to go around for everyone to do that. Nowhere near enough. Even if all the lazy, unmotivated parasites miraculously woke up tomorrow and got their act together. To maintain our standard of living we still need people to spend their days planting corn, collecting garbage, riveting aircraft wings, designing bridges, injecting IVs, etc etc. We have a very long ways to go before there's enough pie for everyone to have as much as they want.
 
RiverDad said:
If wealth is finite and if we agree that there is a lot of wealth inequality in the world today, then imagine how awful the wealth inequality was during the Roman Era. All of that finite wealth spread amongst fewer people alive during that era and with only a few wealthy people, those guys must have each been as wealthy as Croesus.
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You're failing to make a point so badly that I can't even see the point you were aiming for.
 
I think people who demand the rich pay more are just jealous of what they achieved. I dont mind the wealth gap at all, I dont see anything wrong with it because it rewards those who work hard and are lucky as opposed to lazy people who just want something for nothing.
 
grip said:
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?
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A billionaire has more power and control than a millionaire, who in turn has more power and control than the rest of us...
 
faithful_servant said:
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.
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How exactly can you achieve power without wealth?
 
Peter Grimm said:
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.
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It already has..
 
Peter Grimm said:
Wealth and success are laudable when they're earned in an honest way. If they're earned at the expense of someone else, or at the expense of the environment, then they're not so laudable at all.

Likewise, there's no pat on the back deserved for someone who merely inherited their wealth. Generational wealth does nothing to help society and, as a matter of fact, it can be quite destructive.
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"And so in conclusion, ALL BILLIONAIRES ARE LYING CHEATING CROOKS WHO GOT THEIR MONEY ON THE BACKS OF THE LITTLE GUY."

georgesoros.jpg
 
grip said:
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?
Click to expand...
If you want to talk a wealth gap watch this video on America's disappearing middle class by Bill Maher.

 
Peter Grimm said:
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.
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Thought you were from Dallas?

Also, what do you propose it should be done with the aristocrats?
 
Peter Grimm said:
What makes America great is that it's a land of opportunity where anyone can make it. Rags to riches. You are losing that.
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If mostly Europeans started out equally in USA and some made it to be billionaires then that is a successful story built on merit. Now I understand your positions that accumulated money build on merit too may be converted to inherited wealth which may then equal aristocracy and alas "societies cancer."

But since they made it on merit on what grounds would one want their wealth distributed to the rest in order to stop further accumulation of inherited money?
 
cpwill said:
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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Out of education too.
 
Geoist said:
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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Hush now, you are making everyone aware that the currency used in circulation is printed infinitely and does not has the same value with gold as it use to. Let people dream some more.
 
Geoist said:
I never argued that wealth cannot be created. My argument is since resources are finite then wealth is finite.
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Resources are finite but currency is not. Currency/money that most people race for is printed and can be printed infinitely.

Yes money use to run through debt. But I think after 70 trillion dollars of debt too now become a surreal issue.
 
Peter Grimm said:
That's right, I'm all for millionaires. I'm all for the guy that owns his own business, works hard, and wants to buy a beamer and a rolex and live in a nice house. When you start getting up to a billion that's just excessive. Nobody needs their own island and private helicopter. That kind of wealth is not natural and it is seldom earned.

But the more interesting question you asked was whether the government should have the power to confiscate wealth. Actually, they do it every day in the form of taxes. I know because I just filed mine.

It seems to me that the power of taxation is one of those things bestowed upon really any government.
Click to expand...

a government that would take every penny someone has past a certain amount should be overthrown
 
Peter Grimm said:
Nobody should be allowed to have a billion dollars. We need an upper-upper tax bracket of 100%.
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You are probably correct as that much currency would be difficult to store and create an undue burden on government to create all those bills. Now if people have assets that by some means a value is determined, then that isn't their fault.
 
My first thought is "no". I always perceived most critiques of the wealth gap to revolve around the people on the short end of the stick: The ones who barely have enough to get by and have little to spend when it comes to leisure. This doesn't really apply to millionaires.
 
the_recruit said:
There are two ways to increase the size of the piece that you control. Either A) you carve a larger piece for yourself by taking some of the pie that had previously belonged to your neighbors or you B) add some more dough and blueberries and claim that addition for yourself
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Or C, someone VOLUNTARILY gives you part of their piece by paying you for goods and services, or VOLUNTARILY supplying you with labor in exchange for wages.
 
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