Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

[Brian Peacock]

Years ago, the rich got so rich, they actually owned the poor.
That still happens in parts of Asia. People sell their kids, and the kid never gets the chance to pay off the debt. It's not legal, but it's fairly common.

In western society, the rich are getting richer and richer, because money makes money. And consequently the poor are getting poorer and poorer.
The rich don't actually own the poor, in a legal sense, but they do in a practical sense.

The answer is taxation. If you don't want the situation to continue and get more extreme.
My favourite solution is very high inheritance taxation, to prevent super-rich dynasties forming, which is just the old aristocracy, all over again. Spend the money on giving the poor a decent education.

And this is where trickle-down economics, or horse-and-sparrow theory as it was called in the 1880s, comes in. What Seth described was the ideal of capitalism, but to present this as a functional synonym for trickle-down is incorrect. The trickle-down theory has it that structural mechanisms for securing and enhancing the wealth of the wealthy is as beneficial for everybody as it is for them. However, the simple fact that wealth is hoarded, taken out of the general economy in the form of private assets (yachts, islands, off-shore tax havens, jewellery, art, whatever) and/or is itself used to make more of itself, shows the limitations of privileging the wealthy for the common good. Trickle-down forms half of the lie the 'right thinking' have been trained to parrot and come to believe - the other side of the coin being that poverty necessarily enhances the opportunities of the poor such that remaining poor in the face of those self-asserted opportunities demonstrates a deficit of morals or character which should not be rewarded through structural mechanisms (to relieve poverty).

[Hermit]

The trickle down theory is a sham and a lie





and the one-percenters know it.

[Hermit]

Yearly income would be a more interesting comparison. The difference in the amount of work done is not the key...

Last year Larry Ellison received a salary of one dollar, no bonus payments and no stock awards. However, he received $64,979,600 worth of options, $741,384 in non-equity incentive plan compensation and $1,540,266 worth of other compensations, bringing his remuneration up to $67,261,251, which is 1909 times the average worker's pay.

He is not the highest paid CEO in the USA, though. That title goes to David M. Zasla whose package came to $156,077,912 in 2014 which is 4429 times the average worker's pay.

If you think that earning one or three million dollars a week is nice, keep in mind that those remuneration packages are a minor component of their annual wealth increase. The major part is derived from their stock holdings, which of course do not officially show up let alone get taxed until and unless they are sold, and in the USA at least the tax on such sales is discounted by a considerable percentage compared to the relevant income tax scales.

The lowest ranked of the top 100 CEOs in the US was remunerated to the tune of over 20 million dollars, and keep in mind again that would be the smaller part of their annual increase in wealth.

[Scott1328]

No you were quote mining and flinging personal insults.

Really. That is something you do all the time. How was I slinging insults?

Corbynites just cant stand the truth about their fucked up leader. He is a dinosaur. Just look at the mess he is making.

That's a lie. And the actions of others don't justify your bad behavior.

Also, who the fuck is this corby person you are obsessed with.

You know it is not a lie. The leader of the brown arm gang has had more holidays than me but now he has the protection of the mods.

If you dont know who Corbyn is well

Even if you were capable of telling the truth, it still doesn't justify your bad behavior.

[surreptitious57]

But it is very important to carefully distinguish between those who cannot work through no fault of their own and those who will not work
because they prefer leeching off society or those who through their own actions and misbehavior have rendered themselves unable to work

The latter two categories must be induced to labor by depriving them of the benefits of society that are produced by the labor of others
because to extend benefits to those groups is to misappropriate the labor of the productive class for the benefit of the indolent and idle

Would you be in favour of painless euthanasia for every able bodied person who for what ever reason refused to work
If someone refused to work but is doing something else to better themselves would this be acceptable to you instead
Now where would you draw the line at deciding whether or not it was someones fault if they could not actually work
So would you think that someone that was paralysed for not properly defending them selves was responsible for that
If you think they were responsible do you think they should be painlessly euthanised if they cannot do any thing else

[Seth]

You say that as if "owning" wealth means it's sitting in a vault like Scrooge McDuck's.

No, I do not. Some wealth consists of stuff like Larry Ellison's 200 million dollar yacht



or the Hawaian island he owns, or Yoko Ono's collection of beautiful houses. Most of it, though, consists of stuff that increases wealth, and most of that increase stays with the owner. Kind of explains why in 2007 the top 1% of US citizens owned 34.6% of your nation's wealth and the bottom 60% owned 16.1% of it, don't you think?

Um, you are aware that the yacht fairy didn't provide that yacht, a legion of craftsmen and workers did, and got paid for building it, aren't you?

As I said, wealth does not simply sit in a vault, it gets used and spread around all the time. Just because some people have more of it to circulate, and therefore can enjoy luxury items doesn't mean the wealth isn't circulating and employing people in every single industry and trade that serves those demands.

What you're bitching about is the fact that YOU don't have as much wealth as someone else, and the typical "solution" proposed is the Marxist redistributionist scheme of simply taking the wealth that some people have (and possibly their heads) and distributing it to those who haven't earned it because it's not "fair" that some people have more than others. The inevitable end game for that Marxist redistributionism is that everybody is economically equal...equally impoverished and equally miserable, as the Soviet Union amply demonstrates. Well, almost everybody that is, because the Marxist elite always manage to redistribute a somewhat larger portion of wealth to themselves because, they claim, they deserve it.

I prefer that wealth be distributed according to free market principles because that encourages people to work hard to achieve economic advancement rather than what happens with Marxism and it's spawn, Socialism, which encourages sloth, idleness and dependence on government and forcible wealth redistribution.

So if some CEO makes a hundred and fifty million a year more than I do, good for him because those who employ him made a hell of a lot more than that through his able management. If his management wasn't producing wealth for the shareholders, they wouldn't be paying him that much money, would they?

[Seth]

Would you be in favour of painless euthanasia for every able bodied person who for what ever reason refused to work
If someone refused to work but is doing something else to better themselves would this be acceptable to you instead
Now where would you draw the line at deciding whether or not it was someones fault if they could not actually work
So would you think that someone that was paralysed for not properly defending them selves was responsible for that
If you think they were responsible do you think they should be painlessly euthanised if they cannot do any thing else

No, I prefer that nature do what nature does and that every individual is permitted to make their own choices, good or bad, but be required to accept all of the consequences, good or bad, without demanding protection from those consequences at the expense of others. If you want to sit at an intersection and fly a sign asking for donations, fine by me so long as you don't impede traffic or create a hazard. Begging is a perfectly legitimate way to obtain money in my opinion. But if you want to sit around and nobody wants to give you money voluntarily why should anyone be compelled to do so through taxation to fund your desire to be indolent?

As for those disabled by criminals, it's not their fault they were victimized and their inability to successfully defend themselves does not impose any liability on them, all the liability lies with the criminal, who of course should be stripped of every single dime and possession they have, right down to their underwear, to compensate the victim as much as possible. Further needs of crime victims should be served by both voluntary donations (GoFundMe and the like) and at taxpayer expense provided that taxpayers have voted to create a fund for compensating such victims.

That being said, if someone WANTS to be euthanized, I'm all for providing them with a painless method of achieving that goal because I respect their right to determine when and how their life ends, which is the ultimate manifestation of personal liberty. Trying to prevent someone from killing themselves is nothing more than forcing them into torturous involuntary servitude to society, which I cannot ever support.

[Seth]

Yearly income would be a more interesting comparison. The difference in the amount of work done is not the key...

Last year Larry Ellison received a salary of one dollar, no bonus payments and no stock awards. However, he received $64,979,600 worth of options, $741,384 in non-equity incentive plan compensation and $1,540,266 worth of other compensations, bringing his remuneration up to $67,261,251, which is 1909 times the average worker's pay.

So what? His value to the company is 1909 times as great as the average worker's.

He is not the highest paid CEO in the USA, though. That title goes to David M. Zasla whose package came to $156,077,912 in 2014 which is 4429 times the average worker's pay.

So what? He's worth more than they are to the company.

If you think that earning one or three million dollars a week is nice, keep in mind that those remuneration packages are a minor component of their annual wealth increase. The major part is derived from their stock holdings, which of course do not officially show up let alone get taxed until and unless they are sold, and in the USA at least the tax on such sales is discounted by a considerable percentage compared to the relevant income tax scales.

The lowest ranked of the top 100 CEOs in the US was remunerated to the tune of over 20 million dollars, and keep in mind again that would be the smaller part of their annual increase in wealth.

So what? If a CEO makes 150 million per year then he's generating BILLIONS of dollars in profits for the shareholders, which is his job. Just because some line worker stuffing circuit boards doesn't make 150 million per year doesn't mean the CEO is doing anything wrong. His value to the company is greater than the circuit-board stuffer's and so he gets paid more. If the circuit-board stuffer wants to make more money then she needs to think of and patent a better, cheaper, more efficient way of stuffing circuit boards and sell it to the company, for which industry and innovation she will receive her just rewards.

The notion that the CEO is somehow being unfair to the average worker because he makes more than they do is nothing more than Marxist class warfare propaganda.

[Seth]

The trickle down theory is a sham and a lie

That's the fallacious class-warfare Big Lie that Marxist propagandists yammer on about because it resonates with the useful idiots of the Proletariat.

The end result of such propaganda, if successful, is a nation where everyone is equally impoverished, equally hungry, and equally miserable, as the Soviet Union, Cuba and Venezuela prove absolutely.

Fuck that. I like an economy where one can come up with a better mousetrap and make a million bucks.

[Seth]

Years ago, the rich got so rich, they actually owned the poor.
That still happens in parts of Asia. People sell their kids, and the kid never gets the chance to pay off the debt. It's not legal, but it's fairly common.

So, because someone illegally engages in bonded servitude and slavery that makes free-market economics a bad thing? What an asinine argument.

In western society, the rich are getting richer and richer, because money makes money. And consequently the poor are getting poorer and poorer.

Ah, there it is, the biggest lie of all Marxist Big Lies. The zero-sum claim is simply utterly false and entirely intellectually bankrupt. The actual fact is that the rich are getting richer, and so are the poor, as our standard of living here in the US proves. Even the poorest of the poor in the US have cell phones, flat-screen TVs and air-conditioning. The standard of living of the bottom of the economic ladder is at least 15% higher than it was 20 years ago, which proves that trickle down economics does work.

The rich don't actually own the poor, in a legal sense, but they do in a practical sense.

Marxist propaganda.

The answer is taxation. If you don't want the situation to continue and get more extreme.
My favourite solution is very high inheritance taxation, to prevent super-rich dynasties forming, which is just the old aristocracy, all over again. Spend the money on giving the poor a decent education.

Your solution is classic Marxist propaganda and class warfare lies and it never works. Ever. Anywhere on earth.

When you overtax the productive class they stop being productive and then there's nothing to tax and the whole idiotic scheme screeches to a halt as the economy collapses when everyone becomes part of the dependent class. Even a child can figure out that if mom takes away the money she makes selling lemonade at a lemonade stand so she can buy a Barbie doll it's pointless for her to labor at selling lemonade and she'll just do nothing instead and demand that mom feed, clothe and house her.

If you simply seized all of the "wealth" that the top 10 percent of the population own it would fund the US government for about 30 days, and then the economy would be completely fucked because there would be nothing to invest.

The zero-sum argument is a stupid one because wealth isn't a closed-loop system, it's essentially infinite, which means that anyone who is able to profit from participating in the free market can do so and there is nothing that legally or institutionally prevents them from doing so other than their own shortcomings.

This is entirely unlike Marx's aristocratic and monarchical time when there were LEGAL impediments to changing one's economic status by changing one's class. In his time a serf was always a serf and could not aspire to become a nobleman, much less achieve that class status.

That is no longer true, as so many people, including Sam Walton, have proven by coming up from roots of poverty to become quite wealthy...through hard work and innovation.

Marxism doesn't allow that because it deliberately hammers anyone who stands above the crowd back down into the mire of misery of the proletarian masses as a matter of political philosophy and expedience.

[surreptitious57]

you want to sit around and nobody wants to give you money voluntarily why should
anyone be compelled to do so through taxation to fund your desire to be indolent ?

Do you therefore think that taxation used to subsidise the unemployed is morally indefensible ?
Do you think governments should have the legal right to use taxpayers money for this purpose ?
Do you think taxpayers them selves should instead decide what their taxes should be spent on ?

[laklak]

I might buy into it if anyone could actually explain to me how Larry's yacht is oppressing me, or come up with a reasonable explanation of how we're actually going to redistribute the wealth. Does everybody get some of his Oracle stock options? How about Ivana Trump's diamonds, can I get one for my front tooth? We going to sell off Yoko's collection of houses and then what, send everybody $5.27? That will help, surely. Or more realistically, the government is going to take all that shit, "liquidate it" (whatever the fuck that means), and then piss the money up a wall like they already do a vast percentage of the trillions they rake in every year.

Without a rational explanation and a plan it's just a bunch of jealous whining.

[surreptitious57]

I am not bothered at all by how wealthy some are as the rich have always been with us and always will. So nothing is going to
change that undeniable fact. I am more concerned about the other end of the scale for obvious reasons. Although having said
that society can never be truly equally. Even in communist states some are more equal than others. And there will never be a
time when everyone is just equal. Although reducing inequality as much as possible is something both desirable and necessary

[JimC]

Seth wrote:

His value to the company is 1909 times as great as the average worker's.

What utter bullshit. Any number of competent managers could do the same job. Sure, it does require some higher level skills, and is perhaps worth even 50 times more (at the most). But he does not deserve 1909 times more than his average workers, who would be putting in at least as much physical and mental effort as he does. The only reason why these top CEOs are payed these ludicrous amounts is that the warped society they parasitise is structured to allow it.

[laklak]

Without Larry Ellison there wouldn't be an Oracle, which he founded in 1977 along with two partners and an initial investment of $2000. It was privately held till 1986, when it had an annual revenue of 55 million. He changed the computing world. By 2014 their annual revenue was 38.3 Billion. He had been CEO continuously from 1977 to 2014 when he stepped down. Oracle employs over 135,000 people worldwide, with historical earnings measured in multiple trillions.

I'm not buying "any competent manager".