OT: Goodbye to the American Dream

[amdx]

On 8/30/2015 11:01 AM, Les Cargill wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 29 Aug 2015 17:29:30 -0500, John Fields
jfields@austininstruments.com> wrote:
snip


And rich people are the only people who can defer significant
consumption in favor of investment.

Absolutely wrong!
The first year my wife and I were married we earned $18,000, we saved
$6,000*. You can live on less than you earn.
Average family income is around $53,000. But 30% live on $40,000, that
means the average family could trim there expenses and save $13,000 a
year, do this and invest for 30 years and you are wealthy.

* A little less than $6,000, we had $600 in wedding gift money.

The first rich person I ran into had a wedding gift of several million
1970s dollars. The whole "live frugally and become rich" thing is fine
if you're prepared to remain single and/or not procreate. Other
than that, you'll need some sort of Dutch Uncle.

Utter garbage.
Presented by someone who has the attitude, to make keep himself poor.

Please read this entire blog over the next month and come back. You will
have learned there are thousands living on 50%, 60% and 70% of their
income. With plans to retire at 35, 40 or 50 years old.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/04/06/meet-mr-money-mustache/

One of the richest I worked for wore Kmart clothes and drove an oldish
car, and lived in a nice but unfancy house. He was the sort who had a
PhD from a state U in the 1950s in physics and went to work for a
Fortune 500 until the Fortune 500 left millions on the ground,

That's the millionaire next door. There are many millionaires that
drive 10 year old cars, don't live in mansions and shop at Walmart.
"It's not money that makes you happy, it's lack of money that makes you
miserable." Don't know who said it.


> But he made most of his money in real estate.

Great way to make money, but it can be labor intensive.

Mikek


---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
http://www.avast.com

 

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 3:29:03 PM UTC-4, rickman wrote:

On 8/30/2015 2:20 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 30 Aug 2015 10:39:24 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 11:16:26 AM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

Yellen is on the back of a tiger she can't get off. She doesn't dare
to do anything sensible for fear of being blamed for triggering the
next, coming crash.

Wow, you are an amazing mind reader to so vividly be able to know what
others are thinking.

I agree with nearly all your comments on investing, but Yellen's dilemma
is extremely obvious, public, widely discussed, confirmed, and anticipated.

How does anyone--even a government--pass $4 trillion dollars in funny money?
That's the question.

Cheers,
James

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, 31 August 2015 11:03:04 UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 3:29:03 PM UTC-4, rickman wrote:
On 8/30/2015 2:20 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 30 Aug 2015 10:39:24 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 11:16:26 AM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

Yellen is on the back of a tiger she can't get off. She doesn't dare
to do anything sensible for fear of being blamed for triggering the
next, coming crash.

Wow, you are an amazing mind reader to so vividly be able to know what
others are thinking.

I agree with nearly all your comments on investing, but Yellen's dilemma
is extremely obvious, public, widely discussed, confirmed, and anticipated.

How does anyone--even a government--pass $4 trillion dollars in funny money?
That's the question.

Search on "hyperinflation". There have been plenty of examples of that.

The Feds "prevent the Great Depression" package doesn't yet seem to have produced any inflation worthy of the name, and tapering it off seems unlikely to anything interesting either.

The James Arthur "rerun the Great Depression" scenario would have produced 25% deflation (to the great advantage of those - like James Arthur - with capital reserves) but it would also have dismantled about 25% of the real economy, which isn't a good idea, since you can't rely on the good stuff surviving.

The real problem here is that James Arthur doesn't believe anything about economics that post-dates Bastiat (who died in 1850) and doesn't actually have a clue about what's really going on.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 7:23:24 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Monday, 31 August 2015 04:54:39 UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 2:20:55 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 30 Aug 2015 10:39:24 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

snip

The bill for the pseudo-stimulus (about .3 GDP*years worth) has to come due
eventually. We spent about 5 years printing 6% of GDP in phony prosperity,
borrowed from our future. The only question is whether we'll make monthly
installments (reductions in future growth), or have the bill come due all
at once.

The bill for the 1930's non-stimulus - the Great Depression - was a 25% reduction in GDP.

The 30's were nothing but 'stimulus' starting with Hoover (playing George
W. Bush to Obama's FDR). That created the Great Depression from what should
have been a transient panic. Rent-seeking, Smoot-Hawley, and chiefly,
unstable lawless government & federal deficits, terrorizing production
and borrowing from future prosperity. Same same.

> Industrial production didn't get back to the 1929 level until 1937, then took another hit when James Arthur think-alikes prematurely cut back the stimulus, after which it fell and didn't recover until 1939.

Actually that's another myth. Stimulus, being artificial, never lit the fire
it was supposed to light. As soon as the money stops, instant withdrawal
and retraction, as you've just acknowledged. (If it had worked, it wouldn't
have needed until 1937 to ignite a self-sustaining recovery.) We just had
the same experience with Obama's wasteulous, and Japan's been mired in it
since the late 1980's.

> That was probably about one GDP*years worth of lost production.

We've paid something like this time. We're roughly $2T GDP below trend from the
resultant slow growth. Integrate over six years, then add the $4T in funny
money piled up, and factor in the debt load against future prosperity.
Completely unnecessarily, ineffective, and for nothing.

Nice work Barack!

You pay your money and you take your chances, but the US economy hasn't actually shrunk (except for about one quarter, before the stimulus got going) since the GFC.

Bastiat wouldn't have liked it, so James Arthur doesn't believe in it.

Hey, you learned to spell Bastiat! Maybe some day you'll be able to formulate
a criticism, and won't need to depend so heavily on plain slander.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[krw]

On Sun, 30 Aug 2015 16:07:10 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

On 8/30/2015 3:49 PM, amdx wrote:
On 8/30/2015 1:08 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 30 Aug 2015 10:29:37 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 10:12:21 AM UTC-4, rickman wrote:
On 8/29/2015 11:03 PM, dcaster@krl.org wrote:
On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 8:33:06 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

The rich don't get rich by being "allowed" to get rich, they
formulate
a plan, take the reins, and drive relentlessly toward their goal, a
la: "Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead."

It is really easy to get rich, but you need to start early.

Yes, the best way to be rich is to choose your parents wisely.

Or to actually do something, earn some money, and save it.

ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment

To get 'rich' you have to earn, live beneath your means, and save, which
used to be common, but which today many people can't do.


I have more wealth than the total net worth of about 40% of the US
population. Anybody worth $1 does, too.


When I read that, I was thinking 40 percentile and thought, no way!
But you're correct, that shows most Americans are in debt.
I suspect your net worth is more than 95% to 97% of the US population.
That's a $1,900,000 to $3,100,000 net worth.
But, no need to respond.

If that debt is offset by property that secures the debt, it is still a
net positive wealth by the equity.

That's the definition of "net worth" (property value - debt).

 

[krw]

On Sun, 30 Aug 2015 08:16:15 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Sat, 29 Aug 2015 20:03:43 -0700 (PDT), "dcaster@krl.org"
dcaster@krl.org> wrote:

On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 8:33:06 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

The rich don't get rich by being "allowed" to get rich, they formulate
a plan, take the reins, and drive relentlessly toward their goal, a
la: "Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead."

I got rich by buying stocks instead of buying new cars. Some of it was luck, but mostly just recognizing what companies seemed to have their act together and buying their stock. I bought Texas Instruments, John Fluke, IBM, Hexcel, and others. And bought S & P 500 index funds in my 401K . I also bought a little Nucor stock when it was Nuclear Corp of America. Should have lost my ass on that, but it turned out okay.

It is really easy to get rich, but you need to start early.

Dan

I don't think that buying established stocks, getting rich that way,
does society much good. Except for new issues, the stock market is
mostly a gambling pool.

Nonsense. Without a market for established stocks, there would be no
new issues. I don't know of any casinos where the average gain of the
players is 8-10% per year, over many decades.

 

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 9:31:33 PM UTC-4, amdx wrote:

On 8/30/2015 6:04 PM, rickman wrote:
On 8/30/2015 4:17 PM, amdx wrote:
On 8/30/2015 1:20 PM, John Larkin wrote:

I don't think that buying established stocks, getting rich that way,
does society much good.

Unless you want to count the millions of people that have retirement
funds because they have a 401k, IRA or pension that was invested in the
stock market. I think that does society much good.

So you are a proponent of wealth redistribution?


Ya, especially if it's because millions buy a product with their money,
the company does well financially and I get money because I own a part
of that company. That's good wealth redistribution!

I think it's good for society when families can save and invest their
money to make more money, so in retirement they can support themselves.

Your comment went over my head, so please explain how you pulled wealth
redistribution from personal saving and investing.

It's actually not wealth distribution. Rick's confused wealth creation with
redistribution.

If you have a pile of axe-handles and I have a pile of axe-heads, just about
anything that acts to combine or facilitate combining those *creates* something
new, additional, and valuable--axes. Wealth.

If I paid you for some axe handles, we're both better off. Wealth has been
*created*, and the benefits of the increase split between the parties
according to their mutual agreements.

If you or I started a company dedicated to that--assembling, combining, or
producing axes--and people wanted to invest in owning part of our ventures,
we all benefit if our venture succeeds.

Wealth redistribution is when a strongman of one sort or another empties
your wallet and spreads it amongst his friends. That's zero-sum. Less
than zero-sum, actually, as the second-order effects terrorize and
discourage wealth producers from producing.

Cheers,
James

 

[DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUn]

On Sun, 30 Aug 2015 10:05:05 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> Gave us:

>So, you're at the very bottom of a big heap.

Nice try, retarded punk.

 

[krw]

On Sun, 30 Aug 2015 14:54:25 -0500, amdx <nojunk@knology.net> wrote:

On 8/30/2015 12:12 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 30 Aug 2015 08:56:58 -0700 (PDT), "dcaster@krl.org"
dcaster@krl.org> wrote:

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 11:16:26 AM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

I don't think that buying established stocks, getting rich that way,
does society much good. Except for new issues, the stock market is
mostly a gambling pool.

I disagree with you there. Investing in the stock market does involve a little risk, but it is not much of a gamble. If you buy say ten stocks, there is almost no gamble. One or two may go belly up, but it is extremely unlikely that all will. And you will be better off than if you put your money in a savings account.

The system is a gamble, basically a casino with a house cut. Stocks
have value because other investors think they have value. Most stocks
are morally equivalent to investing in Beanie Babies.

IPOs and later rounds of new investment help companies grow. Trading
established shares don't, at least not directly.

I'd rather invest in my own company, where I can try to make sure it's
going to be productive, create products and IP and jobs.

Say that to the employees of Wang, that had there savings and
retirement tied up with the company. It's gone.

....or Enron.

I only bought IBM stock when it was unrealistically depressed. when I
bought, I was never in for more than a year, or so. As you note,
there is too much risk having one's whole life wrapped up in one
company. ...even one that is a member of the Dow.

 

[krw]

On Sun, 30 Aug 2015 11:54:33 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 2:20:55 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 30 Aug 2015 10:39:24 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 11:16:26 AM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 29 Aug 2015 20:03:43 -0700 (PDT), "dcaster@krl.org"
dcaster@krl.org> wrote:

On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 8:33:06 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

The rich don't get rich by being "allowed" to get rich, they formulate
a plan, take the reins, and drive relentlessly toward their goal, a
la: "Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead."

I got rich by buying stocks instead of buying new cars. Some of it was luck, but mostly just recognizing what companies seemed to have their act together and buying their stock. I bought Texas Instruments, John Fluke, IBM, Hexcel, and others. And bought S & P 500 index funds in my 401K . I also bought a little Nucor stock when it was Nuclear Corp of America. Should have lost my ass on that, but it turned out okay.

It is really easy to get rich, but you need to start early.

Dan

I don't think that buying established stocks, getting rich that way,
does society much good.

I think it does. If you had zero chance of ever selling your house you'd
have a lot more trouble buying one, getting a loan, or ever justifying the
decision.

A house has real value. People can live in it.

A company can have real value too--it can make something people want. The
ability to make (and sell) something has value, as proven by the fact that
people are willing to pay for it. (Secondarily, companies can have cash and
own assets & land.)

Like a company, a house can have a greatly inflated value. Houses that would
cost $200k in my world might be ten times that in yours, made of the same
materials, similar labor, and offering the same comforts.

Ah, but the house doesn't cost more. The difference is the land and
the two properties are *not* the same.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, 31 August 2015 11:43:17 UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 7:23:24 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Monday, 31 August 2015 04:54:39 UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 2:20:55 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 30 Aug 2015 10:39:24 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

snip

The bill for the pseudo-stimulus (about .3 GDP*years worth) has to come
due eventually. We spent about 5 years printing 6% of GDP in phony
prosperity, borrowed from our future. The only question is whether we'll
make monthly installments (reductions in future growth), or have the bill
come due all at once.

The bill for the 1930's non-stimulus - the Great Depression - was a 25% reduction in GDP.

The 30's were nothing but 'stimulus' starting with Hoover (playing George
W. Bush to Obama's FDR). That created the Great Depression from what should
have been a transient panic. Rent-seeking, Smoot-Hawley, and chiefly,
unstable lawless government & federal deficits, terrorizing production
and borrowing from future prosperity. Same same.

That is your "flat earth" take on the situation. Hoover's stimulus wasn't substantial enough to do anything useful.

Industrial production didn't get back to the 1929 level until 1937, then took another hit when James Arthur think-alikes prematurely cut back the stimulus, after which it fell and didn't recover until 1939.

Actually that's another myth. Stimulus, being artificial, never lit the fire
it was supposed to light.

As you keep on telling us. It's just a coincidence that Hoover presided over decline, and Roosevelt presided over recovery.

As soon as the money stops, instant withdrawal
and retraction, as you've just acknowledged. (If it had worked, it wouldn't
have needed until 1937 to ignite a self-sustaining recovery.) We just had
the same experience with Obama's wasteulous, and Japan's been mired in it
since the late 1980's.

It did work, from 1933 to 1937, and it's premature retraction was what created the 1937 recession.

I don't know what version of reality you are looking at, but the magical distinction between "recovery" and "self-sustaining recovery" smells of explain-it-all-away far-right economics, one of your specialities.

That was probably about one GDP*years worth of lost production.

We've paid something like this time. We're roughly $2T GDP below trend from
the resultant slow growth.

As opposed to the much larger decline we'd have seen if your favourite lunatics had been allowed to have their way.

Integrate over six years, then add the $4T in funny
money piled up, and factor in the debt load against future prosperity.
Completely unnecessarily, ineffective, and for nothing.

Nice work Barack!

You pay your money and you take your chances, but the US economy hasn't actually shrunk (except for about one quarter, before the stimulus got going) since the GFC.

Bastiat wouldn't have liked it, so James Arthur doesn't believe in it.

Hey, you learned to spell Bastiat! Maybe some day you'll be able to formulate
a criticism, and won't need to depend so heavily on plain slander.

The only reason I pay any attention to the reactionary half-wit is your misplaced enthusiasm for his "I'm all right Jack" self-serving miserliness.

The 19th century was full of demented economists. Some of them had original ideas that their saner followers turned into useful stuff - Marx and Engels more or less invented economic statistics, but it took the Fabians to do anything useful with them - but Bastiat was just tediously unoriginal, though he does seem to have had the virtue of expressing his tedious ideas clearly.

Or maybe whoever translates him into English has polished his expression.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[rickman]

On 8/30/2015 4:17 PM, amdx wrote:

On 8/30/2015 1:20 PM, John Larkin wrote:

I don't think that buying established stocks, getting rich that way,
does society much good.

Unless you want to count the millions of people that have retirement
funds because they have a 401k, IRA or pension that was invested in the
stock market. I think that does society much good.

So you are a proponent of wealth redistribution?

--

Rick

 

[dcaster@krl.org]

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 9:29:15 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

Twitter. Amazon. Tesla.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
lunatic fringe electronics

Yes , buying those stocks is gambling, or at least that is my opinion.

Dan

 

[rickman]

On 8/30/2015 3:27 PM, Les Cargill wrote:

rickman wrote:
On 8/30/2015 11:16 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 29 Aug 2015 20:03:43 -0700 (PDT), "dcaster@krl.org"
dcaster@krl.org> wrote:

On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 8:33:06 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

The rich don't get rich by being "allowed" to get rich, they
formulate
a plan, take the reins, and drive relentlessly toward their goal, a
la: "Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead."

I got rich by buying stocks instead of buying new cars. Some of it
was luck, but mostly just recognizing what companies seemed to have
their act together and buying their stock. I bought Texas
Instruments, John Fluke, IBM, Hexcel, and others. And bought S & P
500 index funds in my 401K . I also bought a little Nucor stock when
it was Nuclear Corp of America. Should have lost my ass on that, but
it turned out okay.

It is really easy to get rich, but you need to start early.

Dan

I don't think that buying established stocks, getting rich that way,
does society much good. Except for new issues, the stock market is
mostly a gambling pool.

I'm not sure how Bill Gates getting rich has done much for "society"
either.


One whale of a lot. Bill Gates asserted that "software is property" and
then acted on it.

I guess it's impossible for people to remember the world before even MSDOS.

I'm not sure what that means. Are you suggesting that without Bill
Gates we would not have Windows?

--

Rick

 

[dcaster@krl.org]

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 6:52:31 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

That's not got anything to do with what I was claiming, and it's just more anecdotal evidence (and not a lot of it). You would need to read the book, though it doesn't look as if you've got the attention span to cope with anything longer than a paragraph.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

My attention span is plenty long. But I doubt if I will ever read that book.
It sounds like a boring book about something I am not very interested in and about something that I could not change. If I had the book memorized I doubt if it would improve my life in any way. Other than being able to discuss the book with you , why do you think I should read the book?

Dan

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, 31 August 2015 11:57:54 UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 9:31:33 PM UTC-4, amdx wrote:
On 8/30/2015 6:04 PM, rickman wrote:
On 8/30/2015 4:17 PM, amdx wrote:
On 8/30/2015 1:20 PM, John Larkin wrote:

I don't think that buying established stocks, getting rich that way,
does society much good.

Unless you want to count the millions of people that have retirement
funds because they have a 401k, IRA or pension that was invested in the
stock market. I think that does society much good.

So you are a proponent of wealth redistribution?


Ya, especially if it's because millions buy a product with their money,
the company does well financially and I get money because I own a part
of that company. That's good wealth redistribution!

I think it's good for society when families can save and invest their
money to make more money, so in retirement they can support themselves.

Your comment went over my head, so please explain how you pulled wealth
redistribution from personal saving and investing.

It's actually not wealth distribution. Rick's confused wealth creation with
redistribution.

If you have a pile of axe-handles and I have a pile of axe-heads, just about
anything that acts to combine or facilitate combining those *creates* something
new, additional, and valuable--axes. Wealth.

If I paid you for some axe handles, we're both better off. Wealth has been
*created*, and the benefits of the increase split between the parties
according to their mutual agreements.

If you or I started a company dedicated to that--assembling, combining, or
producing axes--and people wanted to invest in owning part of our ventures,
we all benefit if our venture succeeds.

Wealth redistribution is when a strongman of one sort or another empties
your wallet and spreads it amongst his friends. That's zero-sum. Less
than zero-sum, actually, as the second-order effects terrorize and
discourage wealth producers from producing.

"Wealth redistribution" is James Arthur's code phase for "tax and invest".

He likes nice simple idea like axe heads and axe handles. The more difficult concepts of a community owned and funded road system to let you get the axe heads from the foundry that casts them and add them to the axes handles (made from wood grown and cut someplace else) is a little too difficult for his under-neuroned right-wing brain.

The idea that a modern socialist society should tax everybody fairly heavily to pay for the kind of welfare, health and education system that produces a healthy, well-trained and co-operative work force strikes him as absurd.

It works well for Scandinavian and Germany, but the kind of tax level that it takes to pay for it is not something he wants in his back yard.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, 31 August 2015 13:06:36 UTC+10, dca...@krl.org wrote:

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 6:52:31 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

That's not got anything to do with what I was claiming, and it's just more anecdotal evidence (and not a lot of it). You would need to read the book, though it doesn't look as if you've got the attention span to cope with anything longer than a paragraph.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

My attention span is plenty long. But I doubt if I will ever read that book.
It sounds like a boring book about something I am not very interested in and about something that I could not change. If I had the book memorized I doubt if it would improve my life in any way. Other than being able to discuss the book with you , why do you think I should read the book?

It explains one aspect of American exceptionalism - why the US is rich, but way down on lots of public health issues. The authors nail down the point that rich is good only up to the point where everybody has more or less enough to eat, after which a reasonably egalitarian wlath distribution becomes more important.

If you understood it, you'd probably realise that the US does need to change in this respect, and you'd have some idea of how it ought to change. The authors don't say a thing about the mechanism - pointing out that Japan gets much the same advantages from a relatively egalitarian wealth distribution as does Scandinavia, while getting there by completely different mechanisms.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 11:10:05 PM UTC-4, rickman wrote:

On 8/30/2015 9:57 PM, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 9:31:33 PM UTC-4, amdx wrote:
On 8/30/2015 6:04 PM, rickman wrote:
On 8/30/2015 4:17 PM, amdx wrote:
On 8/30/2015 1:20 PM, John Larkin wrote:

I don't think that buying established stocks, getting rich that way,
does society much good.

Unless you want to count the millions of people that have retirement
funds because they have a 401k, IRA or pension that was invested in the
stock market. I think that does society much good.

So you are a proponent of wealth redistribution?


Ya, especially if it's because millions buy a product with their money,
the company does well financially and I get money because I own a part
of that company. That's good wealth redistribution!

I think it's good for society when families can save and invest their
money to make more money, so in retirement they can support themselves.

Your comment went over my head, so please explain how you pulled wealth
redistribution from personal saving and investing.

It's actually not wealth distribution. Rick's confused wealth creation with
redistribution.

If you have a pile of axe-handles and I have a pile of axe-heads, just about
anything that acts to combine or facilitate combining those *creates* something
new, additional, and valuable--axes. Wealth.

If I paid you for some axe handles, we're both better off. Wealth has been
*created*, and the benefits of the increase split between the parties
according to their mutual agreements.

If you or I started a company dedicated to that--assembling, combining, or
producing axes--and people wanted to invest in owning part of our ventures,
we all benefit if our venture succeeds.

Who is talking about axes? The point made was that investing in the
stock market was "good" and is obviously not making any axes. According
to John, I believe, it is pure gambling.

The definition of wealth redistribution includes charity

Barack Obama means 'by force.' Charity is never forced.

and I believe
when you lose money in the stock market it is akin to charity.

Nyet.

I seem
to recall a lot of people donated to large charities such as Enron,
WorldCom, Tyco International, HealthSouth, Madoff and quite a few large
banks.

Fraud. Not charity. You're mixing up a lot of distinct, unrelated concepts.

Wealth redistribution is when a strongman of one sort or another empties
your wallet and spreads it amongst his friends. That's zero-sum. Less
than zero-sum, actually, as the second-order effects terrorize and
discourage wealth producers from producing.

What is not zero sum about the stock market? The only aspect of it that
is not zero sum is that more and more money flows into it raising
prices. Likewise money can flow out crashing stock prices making the
investors slow to react into paupers.

You're confusing the transaction with the market. The stock market overall
creates a mechanism for innovation, where people can share the risks and
the rewards of starting new ventures. That's >>zero-sum.

The transactions are only zero-sum if you ignore the future value, which
you just did. If one person has gained from a company's increase, but
wants to bail out, cash in, or convert that to another use, and a second
person wants to buy the future earnings, both gain.


Cheers,
James Arthur

 

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 11:11:00 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Monday, 31 August 2015 11:57:54 UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 9:31:33 PM UTC-4, amdx wrote:
On 8/30/2015 6:04 PM, rickman wrote:
On 8/30/2015 4:17 PM, amdx wrote:
On 8/30/2015 1:20 PM, John Larkin wrote:

I don't think that buying established stocks, getting rich that way,
does society much good.

Unless you want to count the millions of people that have retirement
funds because they have a 401k, IRA or pension that was invested in the
stock market. I think that does society much good.

So you are a proponent of wealth redistribution?


Ya, especially if it's because millions buy a product with their money,
the company does well financially and I get money because I own a part
of that company. That's good wealth redistribution!

I think it's good for society when families can save and invest their
money to make more money, so in retirement they can support themselves.

Your comment went over my head, so please explain how you pulled wealth
redistribution from personal saving and investing.

It's actually not wealth distribution. Rick's confused wealth creation with
redistribution.

If you have a pile of axe-handles and I have a pile of axe-heads, just about
anything that acts to combine or facilitate combining those *creates* something
new, additional, and valuable--axes. Wealth.

If I paid you for some axe handles, we're both better off. Wealth has been
*created*, and the benefits of the increase split between the parties
according to their mutual agreements.

If you or I started a company dedicated to that--assembling, combining, or
producing axes--and people wanted to invest in owning part of our ventures,
we all benefit if our venture succeeds.

Wealth redistribution is when a strongman of one sort or another empties
your wallet and spreads it amongst his friends. That's zero-sum. Less
than zero-sum, actually, as the second-order effects terrorize and
discourage wealth producers from producing.

"Wealth redistribution" is James Arthur's code phase for "tax and invest"..

He likes nice simple idea like axe heads and axe handles. The more difficult concepts of a community owned and funded road system to let you get the axe heads from the foundry that casts them and add them to the axes handles (made from wood grown and cut someplace else) is a little too difficult for his under-neuroned right-wing brain.

You posted your IQ some years ago, and you're simply way out of your league..
You've also assumed I was poor, Republican, etc., none of which was true.
You're constantly drawing dots then connecting them randomly into narratives.

I daresay it's you who's too simple to understand that men build roads, not
governments, and men fully realize the value, and build roads themselves.
You simply can't imagine something existing unless a government takes it
from someone first.

Roads are also a tiny part of our spending, which you should know by now, and
nothing to do with taking a man's earnings simply to give them to another man
who did not earn them--redistribution--which is 69% of U.S. spending today.

But you're surely plenty intelligent enough to understand these things, just
too invested in parasitism to admit that a 50% load affects the host (and
changes the host's behavior).

You keep calling it noble and insisting it's something for nothing.
It isn't either.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 30 Aug 2015 10:46:54 -0700 (PDT), "dcaster@krl.org"
<dcaster@krl.org> wrote:

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 1:20:40 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

Sure, but stocks have a higher value mostly because other shareholders
think they do. Some popular stocks are in companies that don't make
money and probably never will.

Can not agree with that. Generally stocks have a higher value because the company is making more money. The Price to Earnings ( PE ) stays roughly the same. Like anything sentiment does have an effect.

Can you name any companies that are popular and do not make money. There are some, but not many.

Dan

Twitter. Amazon. Tesla.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
lunatic fringe electronics

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com