dfoo
Well-known
I just did some searching and couldn't find anything on this topic Olsen.
Olsen
Well-known
You did not really try, did you....
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jun2006/buff-j27.shtml
....took me two minutes.
I don't buy this at all. This is not a zero-sum game.
Olsen
Well-known
Indeed it is a 'zero-sum game'. The sum that all Americans can share as salaries is constant. The more some get, results in less for others. More billionaires do not create growth.
This is hilarious. The only way for a person to become wealthy is for someone else to become poorer?
If you believe that, what are your thoughts about owning a business? Because if you believe that, every penny you make serves to move your customers closer to poverty.
I guess successful companies like Apple are just pushing more and more people to poverty. All that 40 Billion in cash has doomed so many people.
What a load of crap!
There is only a fixed amount of wealth in the world, eh? So, how much is there?
If you believe that, what are your thoughts about owning a business? Because if you believe that, every penny you make serves to move your customers closer to poverty.
I guess successful companies like Apple are just pushing more and more people to poverty. All that 40 Billion in cash has doomed so many people.
What a load of crap!
There is only a fixed amount of wealth in the world, eh? So, how much is there?
Olsen
Well-known
It is not a load of crap! It is science! Sure, Apple create growth; for Apple. To finance our Ipods we all have to drink less coke, or...?
And sure, there is a growth in world trade. How this generated and who prospers from world growth is a far more complicated story. What is easy to check is that all the guys on Forbe's 400 List have prospered far - far more than just most people, - on earth! A few billion people haven't prospered at all....
Olsen, just because there are those who haven't prospered does not in itself prove that this is a zero sum game, any moreso than there are those who *have* prospered proves it.
If you really believe this, you've got to show something far more concrete than saying "there are people with varying degrees of wealth."
This is not science in any way, shape or form.
Don't forget, every Apple shareholder gains when Apple does well. Apple customers buy Apple products and use them to create their own wealth (for example, Final Cut Pro and Macs are used in Hollywood.)
Still waiting to find out what this fixed wealth figure actually is.
If you really believe this, you've got to show something far more concrete than saying "there are people with varying degrees of wealth."
This is not science in any way, shape or form.
Don't forget, every Apple shareholder gains when Apple does well. Apple customers buy Apple products and use them to create their own wealth (for example, Final Cut Pro and Macs are used in Hollywood.)
Still waiting to find out what this fixed wealth figure actually is.
Leigh Youdale
Well-known
I said I wasn't coming back here, but since we're talking Mammon and not religion I guess it's OK.
Olsen, I think there's a twist to this you're not accounting for.
The sum of wealth (read money) is not finite. Governments can, and do, print more. It's one of the things that feeds inflation if they're not careful.
I think what you're alluding to is not so much the quantity of wealth as the share of that wealth.
In relative terms the wealthy manage to garner a greater share of the expanded wealth that is created by whatever means. Whilst the result can be seen as inequitable it doesn't automatically follow the the poor get poorer. They probably mostly stay where they are - neither richer nor poorer - but in relative terms they are worse off, simply because the other lot have made themselves better off.
Spoks
Well-known
What is hilarious is the lack of general and basic economical understanding among Americans. Ha, ha! Do you have any education at all?
Inflation isn't wealth creation.
So, if we used a comparison of a wealthy person with a net worth of $1M, compared to a 'poorer' person with a net worth of $50k, if the $1M person, through his own hard work and creativity, creates more wealth and becomes worth say $1.2M over the course of time you are saying that the guy with a net worth of $50k, who during the same course time time stays at $50k net worth, is now worse off?
Can you describe exactly how that person is worse off, relatively speaking?
So, if we used a comparison of a wealthy person with a net worth of $1M, compared to a 'poorer' person with a net worth of $50k, if the $1M person, through his own hard work and creativity, creates more wealth and becomes worth say $1.2M over the course of time you are saying that the guy with a net worth of $50k, who during the same course time time stays at $50k net worth, is now worse off?
Can you describe exactly how that person is worse off, relatively speaking?
dfoo
Well-known
The article (from the socialist times mind you) doesn't mention anything about how well he does or does not pay "his" employees (they are not really his employees, he doesn't manage the companies he purchases, he hires managers to do that for him). The article was more about how he layed off people from companies that he acquired, something for which I doubt he can really be blamed. If you buy a company in dire straits do you layoff 25% of the workforce so the company can become profitable and stay in business, or do you keep them all so the company can go bankrupt.
If you want to attack my position, please do. But you'll need more ammo than this.
dfoo
Well-known
Get some economics education please! Of course wealth increases (and decreases). If it did not, there would be zero $$'s in the universe (since ultimately the entire world started from that).
dfoo
Well-known
So your contention is that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world, never changing and its mostly a matter of sharing that about?
Dfoo, don't you see, we started with one dollar and twenty cents.
Everything after that was due to inflation.
Everything after that was due to inflation.
Spoks
Well-known
We can agree upon that. How much has the crude oil price increased in USA since 2001? Some 100% (from about 40 $ per barrel to 80 $)? Over here in Norway it is the same: NOK 570 per barrel. The difference is that the dollar has halved in value....
radi(c)al_cam
Well-known
Digitalintrigue:
"crap", is that your standard language or do you strain yourself so you will not overburden my tiny European brain?
"crap", is that your standard language or do you strain yourself so you will not overburden my tiny European brain?
dfoo
Well-known
It does if I chop down the trees and sell them, and then plant some more, so I can do it again & again.
dfoo
Well-known
Who's to say? What if I rent the land from a landowner? What if the people who buy the trees turn them into paper, and other products which they sell to others, thus earning money for themselves. That's called economics.
So far, no one has given any valid argument for the position that there is no way to create wealth.
If my argument doesn't hold water, feel free to prove otherwise.
Until then, 'load of crap' is an accurate description.
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