Either/or

[Mount Brocken]

The structure is fine, it is the people who seek to use it to control others that is the problem. That is a problem you are supporting with your ideas.

Like I said, I don't seek to control others but to protect the rights of workers and laborers. The market controls others quite well with its economic leverage over the poor. Now THAT is control!

What rights of workers and laborers?

The right to own a portion of their production which comes from their labor.

I should say a portion of the means of their production.

 

[Mount Brocken]

This is fun. I rather enjoy this conversation. Clearly we disagree, but it is an honest and open dialogue. Good form!

 

[saveliberty]

Work overtime or get a second job.

Why should someone have to work overtime just to get by? If there is evidence that profits are low, I would say yes. But for the most part this is not the case. Productivity is high, profits are high, therefore I see no reason for this.

Because wealth by definition means you have more than another. Therefore you do something more to achieve it. It is not an entitlement as is implied in your post.

You can get more by not doing anything at all. Stocks, existing wealth and capital can all generate large amounts of income for doing practically nothing at all.

Only if you reinvest it. That money is then available for mortgages and car loans, expanding businesses, creating jobs. Oh how dreadful. It isn't doing nothing at all, it is a form of risk taking.

It is also a risk working for a company. They could lay one off, the business could go under and then getting another job could take a long time, to where, bills are piling up. I certainly feel for investors of little wealth that risk their money in the stock market or some other business venture. However, the wealthy typically have theirs spread out, to where, risk is not an issue at all.

All invest has risk. Have you ever owned a business? The employee has very limited risk compared to the owner. The employee can also leave tomorrow for another job and the business owner has to find and train a new one.

I think that asking someone if they have owned a business is like asking someone if they have had a pet. Not all are the same. Small businesses and large ones are like night and day. I support small businesses, it is the big ones I have a problem with.

Perhaps you should have specified that instead of terming them simply corporations. Most corporations are small.

 

[Mount Brocken]

Work overtime or get a second job.

Why should someone have to work overtime just to get by? If there is evidence that profits are low, I would say yes. But for the most part this is not the case. Productivity is high, profits are high, therefore I see no reason for this.

Because wealth by definition means you have more than another. Therefore you do something more to achieve it. It is not an entitlement as is implied in your post.

You can get more by not doing anything at all. Stocks, existing wealth and capital can all generate large amounts of income for doing practically nothing at all.

Only if you reinvest it. That money is then available for mortgages and car loans, expanding businesses, creating jobs. Oh how dreadful. It isn't doing nothing at all, it is a form of risk taking.

It is also a risk working for a company. They could lay one off, the business could go under and then getting another job could take a long time, to where, bills are piling up. I certainly feel for investors of little wealth that risk their money in the stock market or some other business venture. However, the wealthy typically have theirs spread out, to where, risk is not an issue at all.

All invest has risk. Have you ever owned a business? The employee has very limited risk compared to the owner. The employee can also leave tomorrow for another job and the business owner has to find and train a new one.

I think that asking someone if they have owned a business is like asking someone if they have had a pet. Not all are the same. Small businesses and large ones are like night and day. I support small businesses, it is the big ones I have a problem with.

Perhaps you should have specified that instead of terming them simply corporations. Most corporations are small.

Define small...in terms of a dollar amount of annual profit.

 

[saveliberty]

The structure is fine, it is the people who seek to use it to control others that is the problem. That is a problem you are supporting with your ideas.

Like I said, I don't seek to control others but to protect the rights of workers and laborers. The market controls others quite well with its economic leverage over the poor. Now THAT is control!

What rights of workers and laborers?

The right to own a portion of their production which comes from their labor.

I should say a portion of the means of their production.

That would be purchasing stock (since you mean large corporations from a prior post). They can do that with the wages that come from their production.

 

[saveliberty]

Work overtime or get a second job.

Why should someone have to work overtime just to get by? If there is evidence that profits are low, I would say yes. But for the most part this is not the case. Productivity is high, profits are high, therefore I see no reason for this.

Because wealth by definition means you have more than another. Therefore you do something more to achieve it. It is not an entitlement as is implied in your post.

You can get more by not doing anything at all. Stocks, existing wealth and capital can all generate large amounts of income for doing practically nothing at all.

Only if you reinvest it. That money is then available for mortgages and car loans, expanding businesses, creating jobs. Oh how dreadful. It isn't doing nothing at all, it is a form of risk taking.

It is also a risk working for a company. They could lay one off, the business could go under and then getting another job could take a long time, to where, bills are piling up. I certainly feel for investors of little wealth that risk their money in the stock market or some other business venture. However, the wealthy typically have theirs spread out, to where, risk is not an issue at all.

All invest has risk. Have you ever owned a business? The employee has very limited risk compared to the owner. The employee can also leave tomorrow for another job and the business owner has to find and train a new one.

I think that asking someone if they have owned a business is like asking someone if they have had a pet. Not all are the same. Small businesses and large ones are like night and day. I support small businesses, it is the big ones I have a problem with.

Perhaps you should have specified that instead of terming them simply corporations. Most corporations are small.

Define small...in terms of a dollar amount of annual profit.

Generally small refers to gross revenue.

 

[saveliberty]

This is fun. I rather enjoy this conversation. Clearly we disagree, but it is an honest and open dialogue. Good form!

Glad you like the place. Yes we disagree, but hopefully we find areas of agreement.

 

[saveliberty]

I cut down a bunch of trees and brush today, I need to call it a day.

 

[Mount Brocken]

The structure is fine, it is the people who seek to use it to control others that is the problem. That is a problem you are supporting with your ideas.

Like I said, I don't seek to control others but to protect the rights of workers and laborers. The market controls others quite well with its economic leverage over the poor. Now THAT is control!

What rights of workers and laborers?

The right to own a portion of their production which comes from their labor.

I should say a portion of the means of their production.

That would be purchasing stock (since you mean large corporations from a prior post). They can do that with the wages that come from their production.

But the amount of stock a laborer could afford is overshadowed by the wealthy investors. And also I would say they earn the stock based on the labor they produce.

 

[Mount Brocken]

I cut down a bunch of trees and brush today, I need to call it a day.

I do too. I am cooking Chicken Fricassee and taking care of the kids. Wonderful speaking with you.

 

[Mount Brocken]

This is fun. I rather enjoy this conversation. Clearly we disagree, but it is an honest and open dialogue. Good form!

Glad you like the place. Yes we disagree, but hopefully we find areas of agreement.

I think we will inevitably!

 

[percysunshine]

The structure is fine, it is the people who seek to use it to control others that is the problem. That is a problem you are supporting with your ideas.

Like I said, I don't seek to control others but to protect the rights of workers and laborers. The market controls others quite well with its economic leverage over the poor. Now THAT is control!

What rights of workers and laborers?

The right to own a portion of their production which comes from their labor.

It is called employee stock plan incentives. Most major corporations have a heavy employee ownership. Everyone has skin in the game that way.

.

 

[bripat9643]

If the pie grows, then it's not "zero sum."

That's the bottom line.

If the percentages remain the same, then everyone gets a bigger slice over time.

That is just it, IF the percentages stay the same. If they change in disproportionately to where the slices are the same size, save those at the top, then it resembles more of a zero-sum model even though the pie grows. If the pie diminishes in size, it is likely everyone will be poor. But if it grows in size, there is no reason to think the portions will. This is the classical fallacy of trickle-down. I am not stating zero-sum is correct in the sense of a static pie. But it does suggest that slices, or portions, can remain the same even if the pie grows.

However, that doesn't reflect reality. Anyone who thinks the poor in this day and age don't live any better than the poor lived before the turn of the century is utterly ignorant.

If the pie grows, then it's not "zero sum."

That's the bottom line.

If the percentages remain the same, then everyone gets a bigger slice over time.

That is just it, IF the percentages stay the same. If they change in disproportionately to where the slices are the same size, save those at the top, then it resembles more of a zero-sum model even though the pie grows. If the pie diminishes in size, it is likely everyone will be poor. But if it grows in size, there is no reason to think the portions will. This is the classical fallacy of trickle-down. I am not stating zero-sum is correct in the sense of a static pie. But it does suggest that slices, or portions, can remain the same even if the pie grows.

However, that doesn't reflect reality. Anyone who thinks the poor in this day and age don't live any better than the poor lived before the turn of the century is utterly ignorant.

But what is the cause of this? Free markets or technology?

rapid technological advancement is a product of the free market.

 

[Dad2three]

I can assure you government does not protect property, they seek to separate you from it despite Constitutional protections. You are attempting the same.

Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father, American diplomat, statesman, and scientist; letter to Robert Morris, December 25, 1783:

"All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it."

 

[Dad2three]

The structure is fine, it is the people who seek to use it to control others that is the problem. That is a problem you are supporting with your ideas.

Like I said, I don't seek to control others but to protect the rights of workers and laborers. The market controls others quite well with its economic leverage over the poor. Now THAT is control!

What rights of workers and laborers?

The right to own a portion of their production which comes from their labor.

It is called employee stock plan incentives. Most major corporations have a heavy employee ownership. Everyone has skin in the game that way.

.

"Everyone has skin in the game that way."


The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains

The Top 0.1 Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains - Forbes

80% of the population owns 5% of the wealth.

Who Rules America Wealth Income and Power

The middle class has been eviscerated.

 

[Dad2three]

Why Thomas Jefferson Favored Profit Sharing
By David Cay Johnston

The founders, despite decades of rancorous disagreements about almost every other aspect of their grand experiment, agreed that America would survive and thrive only if there was widespread ownership of land and businesses.

George Washington, nine months before his inauguration as the first president, predicted that America "will be the most favorable country of any kind in the world for persons of industry and frugality, possessed of moderate capital, to inhabit." And, he continued, "it will not be less advantageous to the happiness of the lowest class of people, because of the equal distribution of property."

The second president, John Adams, feared "monopolies of land" would destroy the nation and that a business aristocracy born of inequality would manipulate voters, creating "a system of subordination to all... The capricious will of one or a very few" dominating the rest. Unless constrained, Adams wrote, "the rich and the proud" would wield economic and political power that "will destroy all the equality and liberty, with the consent and acclamations of the people themselves."

James Madison, the Constitution's main author, described inequality as an evil, saying government should prevent "an immoderate, and especially unmerited, accumulation of riches." He favored "the silent operation of laws which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigents towards a state of comfort."

Alexander Hamilton, who championed manufacturing and banking as the first Treasury secretary, also argued for widespread ownership of assets, warning in 1782 that, "whenever a discretionary power is lodged in any set of men over the property of their neighbors, they will abuse it."

Late in life, Adams, pessimistic about whether the republic would endure, wrote that the goal of the democratic government was not to help the wealthy and powerful but to achieve "the greatest happiness for the greatest number."



http://www.newsweek.com/2014/02/07/why-thomas-jefferson-favored-profit-sharing-245454.html

 

[Dad2three]

“The American people have as little need of oligarchy in business as in politics,” Brandeis declared.


In 1890, there was no national constituency about the dangers of corporate bigness; but twenty years later the Progressive movement had been so successful that presidential candidates in both parties crusaded against the money trusts, although they disagreed about the appropriate responses



TNR s Best of 2010 Justice Brandeis s Stirring Economic Vision and Why It Matters More Than Ever New Republic



Study: The Higher the Pay, the Worse the CEO (Vocativ)
Daniel Edward Rosen looks at a study from the University of Utah, which shows that companies that pay CEOs more than $20 million a year have average annual losses over $1 billion.


The Higher the Pay the Worse the CEO

• Roosevelt Take: Roosevelt Institute Fellow and Director of Research Susan Holmberg and Campus Network alumna Lydia Austin look at additional ways high CEO pay distorts the economy.

Fixing a Hole: How the Tax Code for Executive Pay Distorts Economic Incentives and Burdens Taxpayers

Fixing a Hole How the Tax Code for Executive Pay Distorts Economic Incentives and Burdens Taxpayers Roosevelt Institute

 

[Dad2three]

Does one have to subscribe to either a zero-sum view on economics or a non-zero sum view? Is it possible that zero-sum is a legitimate portrayal of economics as long as one doesn't view the pie from which slices are being divided by as being static? For instance, since a particular nation's economic nation is constantly producing and consuming, this suggests that pies are being eaten and created all the time. But, even if a new pie is bigger, or smaller, the question is, who is slicing the pie pieces? If portions are the same proportionate to the whole pie, then it would be a zero-sum game, given the fact that although it is a new pie, the slices given out are proportionately the same. Any thoughts?

True, a good explanation, one Bripat is to ignorant to understand


Wealth is a Zero-Sum Game


Conservative damagogues like Limbaugh have been able to convince the public that the huge incomes of the wealthiest Americans are irrelevant to those who make moderate-to-low incomes. They even suggest that the more money the wealthiest Americans make, the more wealth will trickle down to the lower classes.

If you've swallowed this line of conservative garbage, get ready to vomit. As all conservative economists know, and deny to the public that they know, wealth is a zero-sum game. That is true at both the front end—when income is divided up, and the back end—when it is spent.

The Front End of Zero-Sum: Dividing the Loot
There is only so much corporate income in a given year. The more of that income that is used to pay workers, the less profit the corporation makes. The less profit, the less the stock goes up. The less the stock goes up, the less the CEO and the investors make. It’s as simple as that. Profit equals income minus expenses. No more, no less. Subtract the right side of the equation from the left side and the answer is always zero. Hence the term, “zero-sum.”

The Zero-sum Nature of economics

WELL SAID!

Corporations exist to distribute gains to individuals after taxes, reinvestment, cost of goods sold, etc. Most corporations do not use stock as a means to create wealth or distribute gains. The reason for that is most companies are small ones or privately held. Companies are a convenient scapegoat for liberals to rail against, until you realize what most companies are.

The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains


Income and wealth disparities become even more absurd if we look at the top 0.1% of the nation’s earners– rather than the more common 1%. The top 0.1%– about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million– are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400.

The Top 0.1 Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains - Forbes


Through size, corporations, once merely an efficient tool employed by individuals in the conduct of private business have become an institution-an institution which has brought such concentration of economic power that so-called private corporations are sometimes able to dominate the state. The typical business corporation of the last century, owned by a small group of individuals, managed by their owners, and limited in size by their private wealth, is being supplanted by huge concerns in which the lives of tens or hundreds of thousands of employees and the property of tens of hundreds of thousands of investors are subjected, through the corporate mechanism, to the control of a few men. Ownership has been separated from control; and this separation has removed many of the checks which formerly operated to curb the misuse of wealth and power. And, as ownership of the shares is becoming continually more dispersed, the power which formerly accompanied ownership is becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few... [and] coincident with the growth of these giant corporations, there has occurred a marked concentration of individual wealth; and that the resulting disparity in incomes is a major cause of the existing depression.

Louis Brandeis, SCOTUS

• Dissent, Liggett Co. v. Lee, 288 U.S. 517 (1933), at 565-67.

 

[saveliberty]

The structure is fine, it is the people who seek to use it to control others that is the problem. That is a problem you are supporting with your ideas.

Like I said, I don't seek to control others but to protect the rights of workers and laborers. The market controls others quite well with its economic leverage over the poor. Now THAT is control!

What rights of workers and laborers?

The right to own a portion of their production which comes from their labor.

I should say a portion of the means of their production.

That would be purchasing stock (since you mean large corporations from a prior post). They can do that with the wages that come from their production.

But the amount of stock a laborer could afford is overshadowed by the wealthy investors. And also I would say they earn the stock based on the labor they produce.

Nope that is called wages.

 

[saveliberty]

Does one have to subscribe to either a zero-sum view on economics or a non-zero sum view? Is it possible that zero-sum is a legitimate portrayal of economics as long as one doesn't view the pie from which slices are being divided by as being static? For instance, since a particular nation's economic nation is constantly producing and consuming, this suggests that pies are being eaten and created all the time. But, even if a new pie is bigger, or smaller, the question is, who is slicing the pie pieces? If portions are the same proportionate to the whole pie, then it would be a zero-sum game, given the fact that although it is a new pie, the slices given out are proportionately the same. Any thoughts?

True, a good explanation, one Bripat is to ignorant to understand


Wealth is a Zero-Sum Game


Conservative damagogues like Limbaugh have been able to convince the public that the huge incomes of the wealthiest Americans are irrelevant to those who make moderate-to-low incomes. They even suggest that the more money the wealthiest Americans make, the more wealth will trickle down to the lower classes.

If you've swallowed this line of conservative garbage, get ready to vomit. As all conservative economists know, and deny to the public that they know, wealth is a zero-sum game. That is true at both the front end—when income is divided up, and the back end—when it is spent.

The Front End of Zero-Sum: Dividing the Loot
There is only so much corporate income in a given year. The more of that income that is used to pay workers, the less profit the corporation makes. The less profit, the less the stock goes up. The less the stock goes up, the less the CEO and the investors make. It’s as simple as that. Profit equals income minus expenses. No more, no less. Subtract the right side of the equation from the left side and the answer is always zero. Hence the term, “zero-sum.”

The Zero-sum Nature of economics

WELL SAID!

Corporations exist to distribute gains to individuals after taxes, reinvestment, cost of goods sold, etc. Most corporations do not use stock as a means to create wealth or distribute gains. The reason for that is most companies are small ones or privately held. Companies are a convenient scapegoat for liberals to rail against, until you realize what most companies are.

The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains


Income and wealth disparities become even more absurd if we look at the top 0.1% of the nation’s earners– rather than the more common 1%. The top 0.1%– about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million– are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400.

The Top 0.1 Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains - Forbes


Through size, corporations, once merely an efficient tool employed by individuals in the conduct of private business have become an institution-an institution which has brought such concentration of economic power that so-called private corporations are sometimes able to dominate the state. The typical business corporation of the last century, owned by a small group of individuals, managed by their owners, and limited in size by their private wealth, is being supplanted by huge concerns in which the lives of tens or hundreds of thousands of employees and the property of tens of hundreds of thousands of investors are subjected, through the corporate mechanism, to the control of a few men. Ownership has been separated from control; and this separation has removed many of the checks which formerly operated to curb the misuse of wealth and power. And, as ownership of the shares is becoming continually more dispersed, the power which formerly accompanied ownership is becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few... [and] coincident with the growth of these giant corporations, there has occurred a marked concentration of individual wealth; and that the resulting disparity in incomes is a major cause of the existing depression.

Louis Brandeis, SCOTUS

• Dissent, Liggett Co. v. Lee, 288 U.S. 517 (1933), at 565-67.

Thanks for proving my point. What depression? We had a housing bubble which was the result of people buying more house than they could afford.