So Payday lenders are providing a service. That service provides short term small loans, to those employed. Those utilizing the service probably have a 1,000 different reasons for wanting a short term loan. Further the people needing these loans make up a very small % of the population.

So paying electricity for everyone does not solve the other 999 reasons people need these loans an does not provide the same service these loans make. Paying 80 electric bill when they need 1,000 for rent is not the same service. It also seems like over kill. WE have a million dollar payday loan problem lets spend Billions and it still does not solve the payday problem.

The paying for electricity is nice but there is going to be a cost and that cost is going to be born by someone most likely the middle class.

Again I did not argue whether it is good or bad payday service stays around. I just said there are some ramifications for shutting them down or making it more costly to do business. But people really should not utilize them.

What? How do you think HFT firms make money?

also because lol
percent increase

reagen increased debt 186 percent
bush increased 54 percent
clinton 32 percent
bush 101 percent
obama 74 percent
trump predicted to increase the debt by atleast 91 percent

but yeah, democrats need to defend their debt plan, when every republican that takes over immediately increases the percent of debt over the previous admin..

but the GROWTH!!1! that doesnt work..

insert economic growth graph that has been an upward line since after the recession..

I'm still not sure what you're talking about. You made an empirical claim. That giving "more productive" (but in reality it's richer, because no one's actually sorting on someone's personal productivity) people money means higher growth.

The trend for the last 20-30 years has been lower growth even as income inequality has meant the rich have been getting relatively richer.

As far as "growth for our lifetimes". I mean come one, no one would make that prediction, especially saying, "unless the Democrats do something". China could descend into civil war tomorrow and the US would have a recession through the fault of absolutely nobody in the US

Not for anything but "We have the wizards in charge and they're conquered the business cycle. Just do tax cuts from now on and everything will be fine" was the mantra of the last Republican administration and that turned out fine.

I’m not pretending we "can’t" do it. I put the cost of attaining genuine equality of opportunity for all Americans at $1.5-2.0T a year. And when all is said and done our economy is generating a $3-4T/yr. surplus. So the money is there. But redirecting it comes at a cost because roughly half of that $3-4T is used just to keep the economy functioning at its current rate, with the other half going towards increasing our productive capacity. That’s blurry but it’s the big picture as I see it.

So in my view if we were to redirect that $1.5-2T to the aforementioned equality, there wouldn’t be anything left over to improve our living standards heading into the future. That’s the opportunity cost of taxing the rich and redistributing it to the poor as I see it, which really has little to do with the rich themselves. If instead their income went to the government, I'd still say we shouldn't spend all of it. It's called budgeting: here's what we made, here's the percentage we're setting aside for future prosperity and here's what's left to consume... in that order.

Look at economic growth under Obama’s 8 years and then in 6 years look at it for the 8 years after Obama. Not only will it be higher but Obama took over at the best time to take over as president in the last 50 years. If govt fixes mark to market accounting rules the day he’s elected we could have seen trump like economic growth if Obama did nothing.

There is no sense in arguing against you that incentivizing innovation is good.

As I’ve said before the rich will always get richer in an economy as free as the US so I’m not sure what you are arguing against in your 2nd paragraph. Rich people kept relatively less than under Obama than in previous administration and that is part of the reason we saw slow growth.

A Chinese recession or civil war could cause a US recession but it would be unlikely. Trade with China makes up a small % of the US’s economy.

Whoever leaked the Trump information is risking disbarment but what's been leaked has been open secret in NY banking/legal circles for years. Trump doesn't know how to run a profitable business if his life depended on it but he's very good at extracting money out of bankruptcies and scamming people.

Aside from medical advances, which I am sure many people would continue to strive for even if it didn't make them wealthy, what improvement in living standards among the non poor, at this point in time, did you have in mind that would make it worth for so many people to live in poverty now?

Maybe doing so would delay or prevent discovering a cure for cancer or a longevity drug resulting in millions of untimely deaths. Who knows. But that’s speculative. What’s not speculative is the latent human potential that wouldn’t be actualized and the resulting loss in productivity and overall prosperity. For example, suppose we stopped investing back when and the tech boom just never happened. Think of all the people employed in that sector and the prosperity it has brought not only to them personally but to all of us—it’s the (exaggerated) equivalent of having all that productivity and prosperity potential at work plowing a field.

Anyway, your question is pretty much the fulcrum of the debate, at least as the debate goes on in my mind. Like I said, I think those who say we can’t afford it and those who say it won’t cost much are both wrong. We can and it will, but a lot of people will still suffer some degree of harm whether we do or we don’t.

Arbitrage for the most part. As far as “usefulness” for investors, higher liquidity and tighter bid/ask spreads to me are very “useful.”

Again, you presented an empirical claim, that by giving the wealthy relatively more money we care incentivizing investment and therefor we will see higher growth.

I point out that as far as empirical evidence goes that claim doesn't hold up. We've seen relatively more money go to the richest and we've seen growth slow down in the US over the last 30 to 40 years.

We've seen companies who don't give their richest a larger share of the income have growth.

All of which means there are probably some confounding factors in your theory.

There will never be emperical evidence in our lifetimes that prove many things in the field of economics. Too many variables and the sample size will be too small.

What do you mean we give relativity more money go to the richest? Relative to what?

Relative to the proportion of wealth that the rich received in earlier time periods. As measured by the gini coefficient. Take whatever gini coefficient you want they all that proportionately wealth, income, etc has all been relatively shifted upward.

Is it as simple as his dad kept him afloat, or are these just paper losses and he's actually super savvy

Probably a lot of both. Except “savvy” seems like a euphemism in this spot.

So you are arguing that I am wrong that lower taxes and de-regulation is good for the poor and your example of why I'm wrong includes:

obama's 8 years, a president known for raising taxes and increasing regulation more than any president in the history of the country

The younger bush who very unwisely uttered the words, "I’ve Abandoned Free Market Principles To Save The Free Market System".

And a recession that bill clinton's administration played a huge role in when they threatened banks to give a mortgage to any breathing human?

I saying people shouldn't take it as a mantra that giving money to rich people automatically means more investment which automatically means higher growth.

That's not borne out in from the experiment in which we did just that. Since the Reagan years relatively more income has gone to the wealthy but growth has slowed down.

First off, when a liberal sounds wacky from his wiki you know he's a nut.

What party and from what country is he talking about that doesn't want to give food to poor people?

Hue, not to be too picky, but I think everyone would prefer you write a sentence or two when you post tweets. Maybe write why you posted the tweet, if you agree/disagree with the tweet or maybe what you think is the education level of the author of the tweet who starts the question with "like".

If the rich aren't investing the money what are they doing with it and how does that action help or hurt the poor or middle class?

wasn't it that great Chinese philosopher Ying Yang YU that said
"if you give everyone the same amount of money, in 2 years 10% of the people will have 90% of the money"?