Wealth Distribution

[Windigo]

having a degree or a class and actively participating in a given field are 2 very different things.
FFS man you took those classes so long ago seashells were still valid currency.

I love it when I get to quote Smuck .... "Now who in hell, other than you, have clearly not been paying attention?"

those classes aren't even 3.5 years past... and sea shells were never 'real' currency, too common,

which I'll demonstrate in principle, by using you and Gussy as examples

one of you gets sex often enough that its value as a relationship currency is equal to the Columbian Peso, or the Vietnamese Dong,

the other gets 'it' about as frequently as Hailley's Comet does a fly-by therefore it is the Kuwaiti Dinar of household currencies...

I'll let you and Gussy decide amoungst yourselves who is what in the example

[Windigo]

Just to add to the conversation.  In general, wealth usually last only 3 generations.  The 1st generates it, the 2nd maintains it, and 3rd destroys it.  There are certainly exceptions to this, but it is just difficult to pass down economic values and work ethics down from one generation to the next.

WoW....

and from seemingly out of nowhere, emerges onto the stage full of yammering grogs... a new grogger, one low posting count stranger... bearing interesting factoids...

pray good sir... continue, 

[GDS_Starfury]

in Windy years 3.5 is around 52,500 sol cycles.

[Windigo]

in Windy years 3.5 is around 52,500 sol cycles.

which is still younger than the last lady you banged

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

The best way to decentralize wealth, stabilize the country and help your family is to start a small business.

I don't disagree.  My brother's been a highly successful entrepreneur for 20 years now.  I myself have spent the last 15 years at a firm trying to bring more transparency and consumer value to the financial services sector.  We've done great by our shareholders, but are only slowly chipping away at the market imperfections that have so many people overpaying their financial firms without even knowing that they're doing it.

But you aren't responding to the data I put up there or the questions I posed. 

Are you saying, "No, I don't care about those data or those trends.  They're not a problem in America."  Or are you saying, "I don't like those trends, but the best way to fix them is to start a small business." 

I'm not trying to score points here debate-style.  I'm just trying to determine if there's common ground.

The latter. Over concentration of wealth hurts everyone around including the country.

I like to use ecosystem vs. economic system as an analagous pair.

Money is like energy, it drives the whole modern system. Complex ecological systems are more robust and resistant to environmental stresses. They are self moderating (in the long term). Disasters are more quickly rebounded from.

A complex robust economic system would allow nature to take its course (yes, no governmet bailouts OR SUBSIDIES) and it would be diversified.

People can readily see a healthy ecosystem/economy. A forest of trees for example. What many don't understand is that that big old healthy forest/economic system is ONLY MADE POSSIBLE  because of all the activity by critters/plants that are small and numerous.

Big corporations/Multinationals (like trees) can only exist when the little critters are numerous and healty... building soil and making nutrients that allow for the trees existence.

They represent a small but significant portion of the ecosystems stored wealth... and they die! All that stored energy/money is released back into the ecosystem for use by the litter soil and nutrient producing critters.

In our economy, these big ass trees must release their stored wealth sooner or later, otherwise the system suffers and it becomes less robust.

If you can follow that analogy, then you understand why I dislike corporations and accumulation of wealth.  "Let the energy flow throughout the ecosystem! Let the wealth flow throughout the economy!"

It is a good analogy.

Let me throw in that in economic analysis what is flowing is often money as a representation of wealth, or rates of transactions, representing rates of economic activity. Maybe think of that as a nutrient in the ecology analogy. The economy is one thing of many needed for the society to thrive. If all of the nutrient, like calcium or carbon say, gets hoarded by one species the rest of the ecosystem dies which later kills the hoarding species.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Just to add to the conversation.  In general, wealth usually last only 3 generations.  The 1st generates it, the 2nd maintains it, and 3rd destroys it.  There are certainly exceptions to this, but it is just difficult to pass down economic values and work ethics down from one generation to the next.

WoW....

and from seemingly out of nowhere, emerges onto the stage full of yammering grogs... a new grogger, one low posting count stranger... bearing interesting factoids...

pray good sir... continue,

It's true. Hence the terms "new money" and "old money" both vs no money.

That reminds me of the opening of a prof that took over a course half way. He looked around the room then said
"Why do we study economics? If any of you have a million in the bank, or have parents with a million in the bank, this course, in fact your degree, is very unlikely to have ANY effect on your lifestyle. Just being in post secondary puts you in the 95% of intelligence. You are here because you know you are smart. The courses will not change that. If you have resources you can go directly to business."

Then we went in to utility theory...

[airboy]

Just to add to the conversation.  In general, wealth usually last only 3 generations.  The 1st generates it, the 2nd maintains it, and 3rd destroys it.  There are certainly exceptions to this, but it is just difficult to pass down economic values and work ethics down from one generation to the next.

WoW....

and from seemingly out of nowhere, emerges onto the stage full of yammering grogs... a new grogger, one low posting count stranger... bearing interesting factoids...

pray good sir... continue,

I've heard about the 3 generation wealth thing before in the popular press - but I have never seen any empirical evidence to back it up or to dismiss it.

[airboy]

Heh, surely you jest, I already have two post-grad courses in economics under my belt.

Environmental Economics (top of class... OK the cohort was only 28 or so in size, but still... )
Economics for Decision Making (3.7)

just because I refute many of the postulates of Adams as being from a fruit-cake prophet that many have shared koolaide with (self-interest benefiting social/human welfare), doesn't mean I am without formal knowledge of economics

IIRC, the tenants of growth/greed/inflation, without acknowledgement of the necessity of recession,depression, social licence and deflation (back when the USA housing bubble grew and burst big time) is where we had our first big disagreement.

(BTW that housing bubble seems a long time ago now doesn't it?)

Have you had fundamentals of micro and macro economics?  Have you had intermediate microeconomics?
Skip the math side of econ - but have you had any standard econ classes not skewed to a particular point of view?

Last questions:
1] do you think that macroeconomics has any real predictive validity?
2] do you think that basic micro theory is accurate or not?

To get you started, I'll answer all of these questions first:
Micro/macro/intermediate micro - yes
math side of econ - more than I care to think about.  Two years of living hell - but useful in my career.

1] Macro predictive validity - nope.  Keynesian theory is particularly crappy especially the "magic multiplier of government spending."
2] Micro theory really does work in practice quite well.

[GDS_Starfury]

in Windy years 3.5 is around 52,500 sol cycles.

which is still younger than the last lady you banged

at some point I'll end up in the will.

[Windigo]

The best way to decentralize wealth, stabilize the country and help your family is to start a small business.

I don't disagree.  My brother's been a highly successful entrepreneur for 20 years now.  I myself have spent the last 15 years at a firm trying to bring more transparency and consumer value to the financial services sector.  We've done great by our shareholders, but are only slowly chipping away at the market imperfections that have so many people overpaying their financial firms without even knowing that they're doing it.

But you aren't responding to the data I put up there or the questions I posed. 

Are you saying, "No, I don't care about those data or those trends.  They're not a problem in America."  Or are you saying, "I don't like those trends, but the best way to fix them is to start a small business." 

I'm not trying to score points here debate-style.  I'm just trying to determine if there's common ground.

The latter. Over concentration of wealth hurts everyone around including the country.

I like to use ecosystem vs. economic system as an analagous pair.

Money is like energy, it drives the whole modern system. Complex ecological systems are more robust and resistant to environmental stresses. They are self moderating (in the long term). Disasters are more quickly rebounded from.

A complex robust economic system would allow nature to take its course (yes, no governmet bailouts OR SUBSIDIES) and it would be diversified.

People can readily see a healthy ecosystem/economy. A forest of trees for example. What many don't understand is that that big old healthy forest/economic system is ONLY MADE POSSIBLE  because of all the activity by critters/plants that are small and numerous.

Big corporations/Multinationals (like trees) can only exist when the little critters are numerous and healty... building soil and making nutrients that allow for the trees existence.

They represent a small but significant portion of the ecosystems stored wealth... and they die! All that stored energy/money is released back into the ecosystem for use by the litter soil and nutrient producing critters.

In our economy, these big ass trees must release their stored wealth sooner or later, otherwise the system suffers and it becomes less robust.

If you can follow that analogy, then you understand why I dislike corporations and accumulation of wealth.  "Let the energy flow throughout the ecosystem! Let the wealth flow throughout the economy!"

It is a good analogy.

Let me throw in that in economic analysis what is flowing is often money as a representation of wealth, or rates of transactions, representing rates of economic activity. Maybe think of that as a nutrient in the ecology analogy. The economy is one thing of many needed for the society to thrive. If all of the nutrient, like calcium or carbon say, gets hoarded by one species the rest of the ecosystem dies which later kills the hoarding species.

diversity and turnover/cycling of energy are key

[Windigo]

in Windy years 3.5 is around 52,500 sol cycles.

which is still younger than the last lady you banged

at some point I'll end up in the will.

I am positive it would have happened by now if you didn't fuck their brains out

[GDS_Starfury]

note to self:

stop injecting new life into them.

[Windigo]

note to self:

stop injecting new life into them.

slightly less than half of what's required... by %dna contributed

[GDS_Starfury]

is there a ppm ratio?

[FarAway Sooner]

Two other facts I'd like to call out more clearly.

First, just because someone calls for higher taxes of a certain type doesn't mean that they're calling for higher taxes.  We can argue until the cows come home about what role government should play in a democratic, industrialized society and how much money they'd need to fund those activities.  But it's simpler to argue about whether we should redistribute the taxes, so that certain groups pay a larger or smaller share of the total.

Second, as Airboy suggests, an inheritance tax is the biggest tool you can use to spread the tax burden more heavily to the wealthy.  But another tool that I think also works mighty well is capital gains taxes.  It seems kinda silly to me--nay, preposterous even--that income people get from capital gains (effectively "money making money") is generally taxed at a lower rather than income people get from working with their own hands.

If we're talking about rewarding personal industry and hard work, it seems to me like a no-brainer that we at least equalize those two.

As I mentioned in point #1 above, what rate we set those at is up for debate.  But I think increasing capital gains taxes' share of the total tax pie would be a net win for society.