The Glade 4.0

More liberal sources would tell you that the middle class is disappearing because of repeated tax cuts on the wealthy allowing them to accumulate it all, remember we used to have a 90% federal income tax bracket for all income over $200,000.

I'm so disappointed in this thread.

With that title, I was very much hoping for some Salma.

Now *that* would've been a proper compare & contrast!

The last time you quoted that nonsense I showed you a list of links that demonstrated it was never collected. And wealth is neither zero-sum nor finite.

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Excellent point.

John Maynard Keynes:


vs.

Hayek: (semi-NSFW)


Hmm, tough call.

The entirety of economics is based on the idea of scarcity. If you have something, I do not. There is only so much wealth to be had. There is only so many resources out there at any given time. If it was not for scarcity, we would not have an economy at all. There is only so much wealth generated at any given time. That wealth is distributed in one way or another. RD is not incorrect- the tax cuts we have seen went directly into the pockets of the wealthy. You can see it very clearly when you look at the increase in our income disparity over the last several decades. Trickle Down was a myth- wealth did not trickle down, it trickled up. 10% of our population holds half of the wealth, IIRC.

Wealth is zero sum, and it is finite. There is only so much in a given economy that can be generated. You can increase the production possibility if you innovate, but again, that does not make wealth infinite.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Just wow.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

I've never seen seen someone contradict themselves so blatantly.

Aside fromt he fact that X population holding Y % of the money (not wealth) is maningless without knowing how much wealth is out there in absolute terms, you do realize that the ability to generate more in the economy at all precludes a zero-sum wealth game? No? You don't realize that?

Do you realize that "wealth is not infinite" does not in any way mean "it must be zero-sum"?

No?

Well, it does.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Montegue:

If wealth is both zero-sum and finite, then how it is generated? To create something indicates that the system is not closed or fixed. More importantly, if we take your measure that wealth is synonymous with money, then how do we generate wealth in a system where the actual money is human labor?

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Khross - is the amount of resources in a given nation finite or infinite? (Land, labor, capital, entrepreneurship)

I will grant you that you can make an argument that entrepreneurship is "infinite" in that someone can come up with new ideas. But land, labor, and capital are not. There is only so much in terms of workforce, workforce capability, natural resources, and capital in terms not of money, but of machines, etc. The combination of these factors outlines the outside limit of what a nation can produce during a given period of time.

In order for growth to happen, we have to either a) find more land, b) employ a bigger or better workforce, c) increase our capital in terms of production (better machines, etc), or increase entrepeneurship.

However, none of this implies that growth is *infinite*. In fact, no nation on the planet can sustain *infinite* growth. Wealth comes from economic growth, as I am sure you will agree. People make money, buy land, etc. However, even money supply is not truly infinite (realistically, no nation can physically print an infinite supply of money, nor is land infinite, nor is there an infinite number of people, not is there an infinite amount of steel by which to create machines to help produce, yadda yadda yadda).

We are limited by the planet we live on. Without it, we have no resources at all, and the resources the planet has to offer are not infinite.

I am not arguing that the cieling is not high. It is. What I am arguing is that it's not "infinite". That wealth is, ultimately, a zero sum game.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Montegue:

I know what you're arguing; I'm telling you that argument is flawed. Wealth is neither zero-sum nor finite, nor, for that matter, is wealth inherently tied to production capabilities and resource limitations. Again, how is wealth generated if real money is human labor?

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First explain yourself. If the means by which wealth is generated is limited, how can wealth be unlimited? It does not add up.

I don't know that real money is human labor. I don't know that I agree with the premise of your question. Even if that were the case, that wouldn't be unlimited, either.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Montegue:

No. I've asked you my question twice now; you have refused to answer. How is wealth generated in a system where real money is human labor?

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Resources is not synonymous with wealth, firstly. Second the idea that wealth is fixed and static is ridiculous since we often talk about growth or shrinking in economics.

Wealth is not a cake, in that just because I take a slightly larger piece that means there is less for you and everyone else. It's more like a candle, that if I light one and touch it to others, mine does not go out and theirs are now lit.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

You are going to have to convince me on the premise of your question, Khross. How is real money=human labor?

Dash - we generate wealth by the use of resources (land, labor, capital, and entrepeneurship). All of these factors are limited, including entrepeneurship. There is only so much steel. There is only so much oil. Ultimately *land* (natural resources) makes every other factor of production limited. Land limits labor. Land limits capital. And in the end, the natural resources at hand gives a top end limit to what an entrepeneur can do.

Infinite? Never ending? Hogwash. There's only so much we have to work with. And if what we have to work with isn't infinite, than what we produce is also not infinite.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Land may be finite, but what can be done on that land is all manner of activity.

If you let the land sit there and accumulate wild grass, it has minimal use for say refining iron ore. However, if you create a smelting facility there, it becomes much more useful for that purpose. If you create a nuclear power plant on it, it's not very good for smelting iron, but it becomes very good a generating electricity.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Montegue:

Why do I have to convince you of an observable reality?

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You're thinking too narrowly. Steel is a resource yes but there is no one resource so critical that all our wealth around the world is bottlenecked by it. Steel is used to make things but so are other metals and alloys. Oil is a main source of energy but only because it is cheap, abundant and efficient. If oil gets too costly we have alternatives like natural gas or nuclear. Service industries are not resource intensive. Technology keeps making the things we do have more efficient or suddenly viable due to lowering the costs involved.

To suggest that the nations, or worlds, wealth is a static pie is demonstrably false. I would suggest to you that it is presented that way in the context of class warfare; Person X has more than you do and that directly and negatively effects you. When in reality the opposite is true. The more wealth creators we have the better off our society is.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

But it still isn't infinite. Are you saying the amount of things you can do with a piece of land is the same as the size of an ever expanding universe? It's preposterous.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Why do I have to convince you of the observable reality of HIGCC? Why do I have to convince you of the observable reality that the President is, in fact, a natural born citizen of the United States of America?

You need to convince me of the premise of your question. What exactly do you mean?

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Montegue:

1. I've never said Barack Obama was not born in the United States. No matter how many times individuals have pointed this out to you, you seem to think I think otherwise. I simply disapprove of his (or his lawyer's) notion that no one has standing to challenge the eligibility of a sitting of President.

2. You have to convince me that HIGCC is indeed all the things you claim it is because there exists no conclusive science or valid science to substantiate your claims. Even Mythbusters has better scientists than the IPCC at this point: "It's not science if it's not repeatable." Since the CRU has made it impossible to repeat their findings, we have a big problem. Any conclusion drawn from their data is necessarily invalid, because it fails to make the research and experimentation repeatable.

3. The premise of my question is not in fact in question. What is money? What is the difference between fiat money and commodity money? What is real money? What purpose does money serve? What is the difference between currency and money? These are all basic economics questions that have the same answer no matter what ideological macroeconomic guru you support.

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And again, these resources are not infinite. They are limited.



That's a nice suggestion, but it's inaccurate.

However, wealth *is* a static pie. We might still find ways to grow to the edges, or bake upwards, but eventually, the pie can no longer sustain that growth. Infinite growth is unsustainable. There is only so much we have to work with. If it is not Infinite, then it must by definition be finite.

Again, is the wealth of our world and humanity equal to the ever expanding nature of the infinite universe?

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Something being non-infinite does not make it static. **** something being non-infinte means it's finite. How'd you come up with that gem? That has nothing to do with whether or not it's static.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Read more carefully. Several times you have tried to argue that he is not eligible to be president because he did not qualify as a natural born citizen of the United States of America. You went through several iterations of this argument, including trying to argue that his childhood in indonesia disqualified him, that his birth to a young mother in Hawaii disqualified him, and that the law somehow unfairly made him into a natural born citizen after the fact.



Except that all the valid scientific evidence says otherwise, Khross. But that's never going to convince you, because you are too ideologically devoted to it not being true.



Money is currency. In the context of the United States, that would be dollars and cents.



All money is fabrication. Currency is not "real", weather it is based on a gold standard, and oil standard, a chickenfeed standard, a sugar standard, or any other fabricated notion. Gold has industrial uses, but as a currency, it's value is arbitrary and without "real" backing.

Even labor is only valuable in an abstract sense. Yes, you produce a good, but the value of that good is also arbitrary and subject to change. So, convince me that labor=money. When I clean my swords (labor) how does that equal money?

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

You still haven't demonstrated an understanding of the difference between money and currency.

As for the notion that labor and commodities are somehow not more substantial that currency: how much is the paper and ink used to create a physical dollar worth in relation to the face value of that dollar? Are there laws that require the acceptance of gold of money or regulate its face value?

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

You came up with that gem, not me. I don't think I used the word Static at all.

Infinite - without end. Literally, you are arguing that the generation of wealth is as infinite as our ever expanding universe. This is crazy talk. There is only so much wealth that can be generated, given our limited resources. Since wealth is generated via the utilization of a limited resource, wealth is also finite.

I never said anything about static. Infinite is the word I am arguing over. Ultimately, we exist within the confines of a zero sum game. Remove scarcity from the study of economics, and we can begin to talk about the limitless potential for wealth. Until then, it's all just fuzzy pie in the sky philosophical claptrap.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show