Pretty much why I called him an absolutist .
For him there is only 1 way , regardless of the existing problems in the system .
No adjustment are necessary regardless of the data’s , even if it was temporary adjustment.

Ideology without any introspection at play .

Um TeflonDawg is literally the person who's 100% wrong in his statement, and the data shows it. He's the one with the ideology.

It's really fast compared to TeflonDawg's laughable claim of no internet access at all., which was the only thing I was debunking:

because it's complete bullshit.

I've used satellite before for extended periods. It works just fine, although you can't play Call of Duty on it.

And 35 GB is a laughable data cap? Wow. Do you spend all day on your ass watching Netflix?

The average speed in the US in 140 Mbps. You're being dishonest because you're an ideologue who wants feels over facts. It is the easiest thing in the world to get a fast reliable Internet connection in New York. The problem is not the network (the topic of this discussion), which again would be obvious to you if you weren't pure ideology over facts.

The reality is that plenty of poor parents are so comically, tragically incompetent that they can't even manage to feed their kids and rely on school lunches. 1 in 5 children live in a food-insecure household, which is incredible - and not from lack of welfare.

Is this lack of food due to a lack of food in stores? Do we need to spend $100 billion to build out new supermarkets? No. It's due to a lack of parental competence so sad that the people who can't even feed their kids (again, due to lack of basic competence) shouldn't even be parents.

most of the country cant afford a 500 dollar unexpected expense. our health outcomes are third world esque for 10s of millions. and for the other 10s of millions that can afford it, they pay a ton.

but I would agree that the floor is much higher than the industrial revolution and the Depression. but thats bc of scary Socialism.

Yeh, but only on the first of the month. I hit my data cap about 2pm and then I go back to bed.

What percentage of this do you think is due to:

a) lack of sufficient income
b) lack of sufficient saving

I'm not sure I know anyone who couldn't meet a $500 charge from lack of lifetime income. I do however know plenty of people who can't afford a $500 charge who are driving $25,000 cars. I've lost count of how many times I've loaned working well paid friends a few hundreds to a few thousand for emergencies. The statistic is a joke; no one who works in the US and is even slightly frugal fails to have savings.

For a concrete example: I quoted a study a while back that shows the difference in savings between smokers and non smokers among the bottom income decile is $4000. That is, people who don't smoke have on average $4000 saved; people who do have negative net worth. And it's not just the US. From the World Health Organization:

Even in the poorest countries, the worst effects of poverty, and the lack of savings, are driven by poor personal choices rather than income issues.
Medicare is third world esque? You have to factor in lifestyle choices as well. Americans have huge numbers of prexisting conditions that come from lifestyle: obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes. These tend to cluster among the poor; after all, the behavioral traits that make you a fatty tend to make you not that great at being a disciplined useful person or worker either. Is that the fault of the US health system or their consumption patterns? And even with health care, medical care often doesn't help. For example, mental health outcomes in the West are no better than in third world countries, despite hundreds of billions spent on mental health, educated doctors and drugs.
No, it's because of economic advances driven by capitalism and rich people.

Your "the life of the poor is the fault of society and the rich and they're the ones who need to fix it" shtick ironically does a lot of damage to the poor, both at an individual level and at a societal level.

Some of you spend way too much time on your phones.

There are lots of places in the country with very limited internet access, it can be hit or miss if your phone will even return a simple web page in some of the places I go. These areas are being held back and also there are lots of business people who would like to stay longer in some areas but cannot if they are unable to work remotely.

I don't know how much expanding broadband is a nice to have, compared to preventing progress, but it is not just a complete waste to expand broadband into communities where it is lacking. Lots of business like coffee shops cannot even offer reliable wifi in some areas. Many people won't move to or invest or start new businesses in areas that don't have solid internet connections either. Also for all the people living there, having to deal with a terrible connection as opposed a reliable one severely limits how much learning and business they can do online as well.

I don't know what the ROI on expanding internet is, but I could see it being positive. Even if it is close to neutral it is worth doing.

My phone? I spend that data cap watching 2 episodes of the Queen's gambit in 4k on a 100 inch projection screen and then I got back into Hibernation.

TS keeps repeating how there is no point in taxing rich people since those people dont consume much and only use their wealth for the greater good of society, e.g. producing goods.
Id be interested in how much truth is in there. Do you have any stats on how much the rich consume?
Im sure its way more than their fair share. (fair share being equal consumption per person, not by wealth).
Random guess is that the top10% consume over 30% of all goods, so theres definitely some room in decreasing that number.

i'm not particularly inclined to agree w/ ts' politics about this but so far his logic is pretty good, i'll keep an open mind

SirGaribaldi,
Good question and it does go the heart of it. Here's the best data I can find:



The top 10% consume about 15% of output as measured by dollars. As measured by resources it's lower (I explain below).

Data is a little bit hard to get reliably because most of these social surveys go off household income, and households aren't fixed size. A bottom income decile is often a senior living alone. A top income decile is often a busy young to middle aged family with kids. Are a young family of 4 with a mother and father working really spending more per person than a single person household? They'll make the top income decile but you'd also expect 3-4x the spending just on the number of people and investing in the next generation. So the stats are really skewed by that. So it's really hard to compare.

There's a great data set from the UK that looks at this. I summarized it above. In raw dollars numbers, the top 10% consume about 15% of all output, which is far from the 30% that you and many others would guess. There's not a lot of fat here.

But money spent is not really a great measure of resources used, because it's measured as retail price. For example, $300 designer jeans don't really use many more resources than $30 Walmart jeans. The rich aren't consuming 10x as much when they make that purchase although the dollars make it look like they are. They're consuming maybe 2x in resources, if that. So even the 15% for the top 10% is greatly skewed by that factor. Similarly with a good restaurant - you're not really consuming 5x the food or labor of a cheap restaurant. So even that 15% of output is in fact less than that.

A lot of the spending is actually money transfer rather than consumption, if that makes sense. The rich hugely overpay for a little bit of extra quality, but they're not consuming in a way that deprives the poor of anything or would help the poor if they shared it. A perfect example of that is airline fees - the rich get a little bit more space and comfort for 3x to 20x an economy fare - and they're in fact an important subsidizer of economy class airline fares. They're barely taking up more resources while majorly overpaying.

People with good incomes tend to get there by working hard and having structured lives, which don't lend themselves to large resource consumption. They're primarily productive people spending their days and lives efficiently creating things that other people want and value, far beyond what they consume. That's why they're rich. It's a simple equation. On top of that, the top income decile already gives up almost the equivalent of the bottom decile expenditure in tax (they are in fact the ones supporting them, being their slaves as some enjoy me saying).

So no, the rich aren't some great consumers of resources. It's a myth and an easy one to fall into when you see conspicuous spending on Instagram, but it's not the norm.

TS , so for you monopolistic strategy and/or outcome isn’t a problem right ?

Yeah, monopoly is a problem. But the ultimate monopolistic system is socialism. The government is the sole central entity and it actually forces people to give them large amounts of money that they spend wastefully since they have no competition. It also creates unnatural cartels through the barriers to entry that regulation creates. If you dislike monopoly so much, you should be very anti socialism and anti government.

I missed this gem:
You never actually say anything, it's all weasel wording with you. And a yes you cited a "multitude of reasons" they're angry and frustrated, but you don't mention 1-4. You put the riots ultimately down to what see as systemic unfairness. That's a rather small part of the reason for the riots and Democrats ruining cities for a year. Most if is Machiavellian politics by Democrats, deliberately stirring up the mob and teaching grievance politics everywhere.

I've lived about a year and half of my life all over the US, I've seen a good portion of the country. Not the same as living there of course, but living there and being subject to its media and groupthinks clouds your mind as well.

It is entirely relevant to the riots. The left literally stirred up rioters, funded them, encouraged them including violence, lied about the level of violence in left wing media, refused to police them, refused to prosecute rioters, for a year. In CHAZ amidst rapes and murders and mobs occupying the city, the Democrat politicians literally told the police to stand down and let the mob have 6 blocks of the city for months.

On top of that the left has been teaching the most toxic of activist grievance politics for a decade+. This is 100% a left wing problem caused by left wing politics and leaders.

I mean, you can draw the line from Trump inciting grievance over the election to the storming of the capital, but you can't draw the line from the left's grievance politics to a year of riots ruing mostly minority neighborhoods? It's just weird.

Again you backtrack from agreeing with me on 1-4 to again stating that (5) is your reason. It's incredible. It's all weasel word and feels with you - no facts can penetrate.

What specifically is "morally disgraceful" and "arguably suboptimal for the economy" with policy and law? Let's start with the fact that poor are gifted $2.7 trillion in welfare per year (health care and money/food/housing) from the rich - and that's just the federal government.

The main thing I see that's morally disagraceful and definitely suboptimal for the economy is letting China steal US wealth and wage deliberate economic war on a massive scale. Everything pales beside that treason that US politicians commit, letting that go on, and its effect on the bottom decile over two decades - which has been papered over by debt and unsustainable spending. The rest is a sideshow in terms of effects.

Thanks Toothsayer for that indepth response, turns out my guesstimate was indeed way off.
One point Id have to add is that while "household income" might be a good proxy for rich people, I think as you pointed out, especially self-made hard working people are very cautious with their money. But wealth is mostly inherited and these people tend to spend more money on consumption. I think I heard somewhere that up to 90% of Louis Vuitton customers dont spend money they worked for themselves, but instead spend money earned by parents/spouse.

So I think if you do your analysis by wealth and not by income there might be a slightly higher proportion.

And I was mostly thinking about rich people buying supercars and living in villas surely have to spend more than twice the average, but thats prolly the lifestyle of the top 0.1% - 1%. the top 1-10% in income is probably not even rich yet.
So if you look at the top0.1% in wealth there is surely some "fat" to skin left.

You're going to need a source on this wealth is inherited thing because the science I've seen on this is the opposite. Most wealth is self-made and most generational wealth gets completely depleted by the 2nd-3rd generation because they have no clue how to manage or do anything.

Yeah I can't find good data, most of this stuff is done by income since it's more measurable (tax, etc).

The trouble for your 0.1% is that the smaller the percent you define as "legitimately plunderable", the less there is to plunder. Let's say the top 0.1% spend 10x a poor person. Great. If you take all their consumption you add 1% to the consumption pool, which is meaningless. Efforts to curb smoking and gambling add way more into the pockets of the poor than plundering all the rich.

Supercars are actually a good example of how small the consumption of the superrich is, and how there's nothing to plunder. Ferrari did a mere $3.7 billion euro in total revenue last year. They just passed the 10K cars mark last year. Compare that with the global car market of $2.7 trillion and 70 million cars. Ferrari makes up less than 0.2% of total car output in revenue and less than 0.02% of car numbers. You could plunder all the ultra uxury car makers and it would make zero difference to the poor's access to transport.

Similarly with Louis Vuitton. A tiny tiny fraction of global clothing and bag output, and an even smaller fraction of real output - some of the price is merely wealth transfer.

The superrich just do not consume a meaningful amount of output. Nearly all economic output is consumed by the middle and lower classes. The only people you can plunder if you want to improve the lot of the poor are the middle classes. If you plunder the rich you plunder productive capital rather than consumption (since the superrich have no meaningful part of global consumption) and either give it to wasteful bureaucrats or turn future capital investment into current extra consumption by the poor.

The superrich are however an excellent target for left wingers to stir up feelings of envy and blame in the populace for their own selfish ends (political power), and also to avoid the hard questions of who to plunder to help the poor (the rich have nothing to plunder in terms of consumption so you have to take it from the middle class) or why their policies aren't working.

"Blame the rich/racism" is far easier than "you smoke too much, you do degrees which are economically worthless, your culture sucks and you need stop leaving your kids". No one wants to hear it's their own fault - except Asian cultures which is why they thrive in the US.

I said a "multitude of reasons" and your "1-4" and 5 are the multitude of reasons. I'm not being "weasel worded," you're just refusing to acknowledge that we are saying the same thing, you just don't realize it. Either that or you're deliberately doing it just to be argumentative and label me

Once again you are fixated on Democrats and that is simply not going to paint a full picture. That's your problem, not mine. Republicans have ruined things too

I don't watch cable TV nor listen to radio or podcasts so I have no idea why you're bringing up media. I'm not a Democrat or a Republican and have been cursed out in PMs and posts from both sides on 22 so I have no idea why you're bringing up groupthink either

The US is massive and has just about every type of land you can imagine. 1.5 years even in one specific place, you'd know not very much about that one specific place itself. You basically know little about this country and it shows in the way you talk about it. You are smarter than most people imo, so your interpretation of the info you look for to make assumptions about the country show a general albeit shallow understanding of the US. What I said about places in the country having no access is true and even your own source shows that. The fact that it didn't say 100% is honestly hard to believe in this day and age, and yet it's still not 100%. More importantly, many areas have pretty much worthless connections which is still a problem for a variety of reasons, some of which lead into exacerbations of the already growing gap in wealth and income, and will continue as the internet becomes not only a staple in standard of living, but one for education and business (read: the economy and infrastructure)

The riots being "left wing" or "right wing" is not relevant to the point I was making. You are again fixating on Democrats to make a point that has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Riots happen because people are angry. They are angry for many reasons, of which are the very same reasons you listed among others. The point was to show that they are becoming widespread and violent and destructive and it's not getting better. It's getting worse. The Capitol is a federal building. That it was breached at all is kind of shocking, especially the fact that Secret Service had to shoot someone for trying to breach a barricade which was built as a last resort to protect the politicians that were trapped in the building. Like 5 people died and it is not inconceivable that several politicians could've been killed that day. Some of them thought they were actually going to die

Literally doesn't matter it was Trump supporters. Literally doesn't matter the protests during covid was mostly Democrats. CHAZ anarchists and Antifa. The point is it's getting worse and simply maintaining the status quo certainly isn't going to help. It permeates and even exacerbates it. Summarily rejecting an infrastructure plan or just the broadband part is essentially saying we should maintain the status quo, unless you are going to present actual solutions to the problems other than pointing your finger at the poor and unproductive and saying they are poor and unproductive...

Our healthcare system is for profit and that has created problems. It's also bloated the cost of everything as a result. We have insurance companies literally denying claims as a mode of profit-seeking. We prioritize profit over optimal care, and people still die and go bankrupt as a result. It is obscene, barbaric, and morally disgraceful. Healthcare tethered to employment has been a drag on the economy for a while now. The labor market is less fluid because of this. It is clearly suboptimal and has led to welfare programs that I would argue are trash and would cease to exist with a true universal system. It would also make people more productive because instead of getting denied for care, they'd get actual care, recovery/treatment, and go back to work instead of fighting insurance companies for months and years while also draining their bank accounts

Prisons being for profit is also morally disgraceful. It has led to terrible conditions in the prisons which is inhumane, as well as laws on the books that were lobbied for due to profit-seeking. It is definitely a moral disgrace and has kept people from being able to get jobs or ascend thru meritocracy. It's kept people from being with their families, or present in the lives of their children. It's hard to be productive if you're in jail and especially so when the correct treatment is not jail but rehab or mental health services. We have sentencing guidelines that are longer than necessary or draconian in nature too. Recidivism rates declining is not a goal of anyone who benefits directly from a for profit prison network. That's kind of bad for an economy lol...

I agree

Unfortunately, much like most of the other points I brought up, we tend to kick the can down the road rather than directly address problems which require political will, great effort, and patience. We basically refuse to have all 3 here in the US

Tooth is this where I join this thread and counter your politarding and you pretend that no politarding existed or was a problem prior?

Is this where you start crying for it to 'STOPPPP' as you seek to create a safe space?

This is a politarding thread by definition, Cuepee. It's literally in the OP. This isn't like the covid thread where it should be mostly about covid.

"Counter your politarding" is cute. No one appointed you hall monitor or even finds you as someone with anything interesting to say around here. You're offering your opinion. If you want to offer your opinion on politics in a politarding thread like this one, like I do, why would anyone object?

None of that means I will reply to you - I'll probably ignore you as your ability to bring up interesting and relevant points is limited (I hope I'm wrong) - but certainly no one will complain if you politard in a politard thread.

I believe in game theory and mix strategies.
To me a mix of the 2 system ( socialism’s and capitalism) is far better than each system trying to working out by themselves.
The professional sports league came to that conclusion obviously and they are richer than ever .

By focusing on the quality and efficiency of the system and not solely about profits ( meaning sharing between all parties involved) , everyone benefited from this , ending up with a better products , profits and healthier ( les monopolies and disparity ) system for futur growth .


Imo your way ( pure capitalism) makes it impossible to prevent monopolies and inequalities that becomes so big , it endangers the stability of the system itself with disastrous consequences.
History as kind of show it many times....

Stop with the processional comparison. Each sport is really only one business.

people making what you consider bad choices should not be denied a baseline level of modern amenities. we have the resources for that.

and ofc you are wrong. most people work. most people work many hours doing shitty work that makes money for other people.

after all the **** we just saw from COVID with so called "essential workers" that make **** pay and have to provide their own PPE and with the billionaire class making like a Trillion dollars over those months, your worldview was proven a complete joke.

Idk, I see ToothSayer making thorough, good-faith arguments with sources and logic, while a lot of people are pot-shotting and cherry-picking. Enjoying the discussion.