(Note to Zeno , this is not a political post, its a scientifically thought one as best could in the brief time written and wished to be debated with scientific arguments not politics, it deserves - and the thread too- SMP's minds and not politics because what world we should live is definitely a scientific problem eventually.)

Another clue for those that dont get what i say about the system crashing if rich get richer and the rest remain flat to slightly up or typically down.

How much money do you have today sitting in the sidelines worldwide DOING NOTHING FOR THE GOOD OF ALL OF SOCIETY??? Is it a record. Is it like betting the market will crash worldwide? Is it even like wanting it to happen. Sure looks like it! look at how inept are politicians worldwide unable to act free and do what it takes obstructed by profit making residing at the top of our value system as society! We are victims of money culture not beneficiaries anymore.

Tell me what is it that the super rich do with their money? Do they use it to help society solve its problems or do they use it to generate more (and only by coincidence improve society if we get lucky) ? Not of course all the rich but the majority that matters.

Tell me why is it good for a society that the top 1% has 35% of assets?


"According to the Congressional Budget Office, between 1979 and 2007 incomes of the top 1% of Americans grew by an average of 275%. During the same time period, the 60% of Americans in the middle of the income scale saw their income rise by 40%. Since 1979 the average pre-tax income for the bottom 90% of households has decreased by $900, while that of the top 1% increased by over $700,000, as federal taxation became less progressive. From 1992-2007 the top 400 income earners in the U.S. saw their income increase 392% and their average tax rate reduced by 37%.[13] In 2009, the average income of the top 1% was $960,000 with a minimum income of $343,927.[14][15][16]

In 2007 the richest 1% of the American population owned 34.6% of the country's total wealth, and the next 19% owned 50.5%. Thus, the top 20% of Americans owned 85% of the country's wealth and the bottom 80% of the population owned 15%.Financial inequality was greater than inequality in total wealth, with the top 1% of the population owning 42.7%, the next 19% of Americans owning 50.3%, and the bottom 80% owning 7%.[17] However, after the Great Recession which started in 2007, the share of total wealth owned by the top 1% of the population grew from 34.6% to 37.1%, and that owned by the top 20% of Americans grew from 85% to 87.7%. The Great Recession also caused a drop of 36.1% in median household wealth but a drop of only 11.1% for the top 1%, further widening the gap between the 1% and the 99%.[17][18][19] During the economic expansion between 2002 and 2007, the income of the top 1% grew 10 times faster than the income of the bottom 90%. In this period 66% of total income gains went to the 1%, who in 2007 had a larger share of total income than at any time since 1928.

Dan Ariely and Michael Norton show in a study (2011) that US citizens across the political spectrum significantly underestimate the current US wealth inequality and would prefer a more egalitarian distribution of wealth, raising questions about ideological disputes over issues like taxation and welfare."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_distribution



Look at this fact that few notice.

The avg middle class or poor person spends 90% or more of what they make each month. Yes it goes back to society to fund economy. It is recycled partially (of course in the west a lot of it goes to Asia, thanks to capitalism and the globalization and greed of corporations and of course the greed of individual consumers that are certainly victims of campaigns and brain washing and lack of solid education something that definitely helps corporations and corrupt politicians as the wiser people are the less tolerant of the bs going on).

Now tell me what a rich person that makes >100mil per year does with their money (and even 2 mil) ??? Does it find its way back to the economy at a rate of 90%??? REALY??? Is a rich family spending most of it for food, education ,entrainment, trips, health, cars etc you name it that goes back to society??? Like hell they do. I dont want to take their money. I want them to recognize that unless they start using that money to improve the society they live in they are screwed royally!

Let me ask you this;

If i want to create the national math Olympics team of the US what will i do??? Will i start giving test exams in only the top rich schools or will i go to find all possible students across all society and give them all the chance to be tested. If i dont do that China or India (countries that are far worse in average terms in many material metrics but way more populous) will have a better team. They do any way very often as is.

So i go and try to derive my team from all students. And of course if all students were being given great avg education at an early age my results would be even better. Because certainly i do expect to get more top star students per class in good (not lazy rich, seriously good working and well funded etc) schools than in poor ones. If i symmetrically invested in the education and well being of all my youth i would have better results. So why is society at large any different? What wealth we own is a very key force behind what opportunities we have to do something interesting.

Why should the top 20% have 85% of country's wealth. Are the 80% of the people you see out there in the street when you get out the worthless LOSERS??? They are our fellow citizens! They have potential that they will rarely realize because nobody cares for them!

If the top 20% is doing with their 85% of nation's wealth a poor job then we all pay eventually with a collapse.

It is a mistake for so few to have the means to decide their lives trajectory and that of others based on profit taking principles mostly. A massive mistake that is no different than creating your math Olympic team using only 20% of the country's students. It is the exact same error only at a much more severe scale.

It is not about taking the money from the rich. It is about forcing them to make money ethically and then to use it to improve society and themselves at the same time and not only themselves. They owe it because they took it from the rest of society either the right or the wrong way or both. They took it from the rest 80% of people that is certainly not the losers but the core, the heart and the hope of a society!

Your intentions are good but your post is bad. Do stick to scientific and not propaganda writing style. A LOT of bad argumentation in it that are probably wrong.

ex.
Forcing people to spend their money just because you want it is a no go. "They owe it because they took it from the rest of society "...right they just took it.... I've got a problem when they take it via criminal activities but if someone provides useful utility to society it just bad argumentation....

There you go you dont want to maximise longevity either.

I was just nice....

I assume that is your plan do to all negativity....

You should be nice more because its the only bit you got right. The downside of longevity could be minimized if society didn't make it so difficult to end our life when we've had enough.

I assume this is you not being nice as you've gone wrong again. Its a strange but common bias that allows concentrating on enjoying life as much as possible rather than prolonging it as much as possible to be seen as negative.

Yes, I'm bias to my life....probably the same bias that kept the lifeforms alive all those million years on this Earth

I think Masque raises an interesting question about capitalism but is being far too USA centric. Arguing that poor haven't got much richer in the USA shows a problem with capitalism is like arguing that losing energy in an open system shows a problem with the conservation of energy.

(there are many ways to force the rich to do the right thing trust me, you can tax then 70% if they dont and only 10% if they do and we all win by them doing it! especially them!)


Really my post is bad? If it is so bad why dont you show me where it is bad. Where is the propaganda? I only used facts and didnt support any party (do you see how against communism/current socialism for example when i attack capitalism, this is a clue for you) . What i claimed and didnt prove is easily proven if we use more space and time with examples.

Do you disagree that many rich people make their money in ways that actually undermine society??? In what ways is a society better because tickets in the movies are as expensive as they are. Why does a movie actor need to make 10 mil if they can be as happy with 2-3 and the public paying less. Why does a studio need to make tons of profit and not 50% of it and take the other 50% and put it to schools? (screw welfare arguments, i want to invest in real tangible proven progress methods, i want to send profit to something definitely correct).

Take a pornographic company. Does it really care about what it does to the cast? It serves a function for men and some women worldwide that is a real issue so i am not some prude here against sex industry but certainly a society with much better position on sex and stronger methods to deal with the desire more ethically would not need pornography as much or would have it done more nicely and with quality and care for all involved instead of exploiting little girls and not caring for their families or their life later (drugs, alcohol etc). The more dependent and poor the girls are the easier to exploit to do anything and have them also think they do what they like for sure. Again i am the last to call a prude here. Just saying.

If i close factories here to move to China dont i undermine american citizens in order to make higher profits??? Why is the profit taking of the company more important than a family losing a house, parents divorcing and kids growing up in some kind of misery rarely interacting well with overworked parents? Also for example why isnt a rich oil company investing 50% of its profits to fusion research or to solar energy or to electric car industry development etc. Because if they did that, they will kill their oil profits. In fact they will lobby against those that try to do this as well. So you instantly have a sector of society with a lot of money that will absolutely never use it to improve clean energy production for the world unless it makes them MORE money than a system that destroys the planet gradually.

Another energy related example. Oil extraction is not costing 50 or 60 $ per barrel even in some hard cases. Probably more like 10-20-30 depending on difficulty. Yet you do not see them trying to extract from the 30 or 25 cases with as much enthusiasm which would instantly flood the market with oil and take the prices down and stimulate dramatically stock markets world wide. Correlate the rise of markets in the 90s with oil prices. No they will milk it as much as possible and they will facilitate the collapse of the system. It is not very different in drug industry.

Tell me again if my bill for internet and TV etc was 100$ smaller would i take that money and go with prostitutes or would i use it to buy some new technology or books or travel basically do something definitely more valuable to society than what say XYZ company providing me these services does.

Do you think a chip company is pushing technology as fast as it can or only as fast as it takes to remain ahead of competition. So if competition is not significant it will milk the curve of improvement as much as possible because if it accelerates it fast we will get much better computers a lot faster and therefore they will make much less for that fast progress.

This is elementary. If i am a bypass operations surgeon will i be happy if my job drops 80% because people started using some better diet or drugs??? As a doctor i should be happy, as a money maker like hell! If i am dentist do i like my customers (sorry its not patients!) to wash their teeth regularly or not???


Competition if it can make someone that is at the top money does force progress eventually. But it will never force it with the kind of urgency and ferocity that a society needs it. Why? Because the society has no problem making 0 money by advancing the life of its members but a company will never like that! It cant get more basic! No company would have sent anyone to the moon yet.Even now you do not see them after urgent plans to create missiosn with 10k prices. More like 150 mil prices over 40 years after landing there.

I agree, I (mostly) try not be biased.

no no, provided I read what you wrote correctly you are warping things with your perspective, dramatically

Please ignore the propaganda in the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOwZwkhFemQ

we are sliding very far away from what you are suggesting. I am blown away by you suggesting the poor are catching up to the rich.

Thanks for noticing that.


But eventually all the world is Europe or US, all Asia and South America and even Africa become equal with the rest eventually or nearby anyway. Then my USA argument is a world argument because we have a saturated system. If we wait for this to happen the collapse of western societies will create the revolution in a violent manner very fast anyway. Because its one thing to be poor for centuries and slowly get better and another to be prosperous and suddenly crash. The violence is massive then. Plus crash of west = crash in Asia anyway or Germany/Northern Eur.Countries /France if rest of Europe fails etc.

but isn't that the most amazing triumph for capitalism?

maybe and its interesting but mostly I dont want to lose the above triumph and I suspect most of the west would very happily live with absolute poverty for billions as long as its not us.

I never said that or suggested it.

What I thought you said was that the poor of today are richer then the poor of 10 or 20 years ago or whatever....

if thats true then I do believe you suggested it.

really!?

You will just have to believe me, I didn't suggest it.