Sklansky wasn't trying to define the word for everyone else or say what other people's definition of rich is. He was saying what he considers to be rich.

Sure -- and I don't doubt that it was exaggerated greatly for effect, or to make the point about relative conceptions of wealth.

This was already covered back when this was in the low content thread:

So why is his view silly?

Also, even if he didn't exaggerate his position, you certainly did by substituting "eat at an expensive restaurant most nights" with "eat at the most expensive restaurant in the country every night".

If we agree that the post was "greatly exaggerated for effect" then I hardly know what else there is to say.

Alternatively, I would argue that it is silly to maintain personal definitions for words which one knows to deviate substantially from the common view.

I don't agree that his definition was exaggerated. He listed a bunch of stuff rich people do. Eat out at nice restaurants, travel in style, drive a nice car, live in a nice house. Seems pretty reasonable to me.

You exaggerated it by changing "eat at an expensive restaurant most nights" to "eat at the most expensive restaurant in the country every night".

Indeed I did. I only ask that we note that my original post about Per Se appeared before Sklansky's one about "four star" restaurants. And that dinner at any four star restaurant is going to be quite expensive.

Whether or not his post was exaggerated, well, here it is; I'll let others review for themselves.

Looks like a reasonable definition to me.

OK. There is, without question, a wide gulf between these two values.

I didn't say it was the same as my definition. I said it was reasonable. Different people mean different things when they say "rich".

David probably has a "well-to-do" category that roughly coincides with my "rich" category. This is perfectly reasonable.

well money creation enables bubbles that distort profits and accounting in general. this what gives incentive for those who are around to leak out as much as possible since the gravy train aint gonna last. it cant happen in any system or at least not at the same levels because a lot of the issues are supposed to be balanced by performance and accountability from the shareholders. However this isnt possible in a system where the financial state of firms are misleading and then there are the problems with transparency which are immense in an environment where banks are protected by the fed and other federal agencies from properly disclosing their financial state.

Jesus, holy logic fail.

I like David's definition.

Has Henry commented on this thread?

So is a definition more "right" the more people agree with it? If 60% of Americans think fart jokes are funny, does that mean someone who thinks fart jokes aren't funny is wrong? Also, what group are we polling here? Americans? But why is that any better than a broader category (say, all humans) or a stricter one (all those within a city?)

No but there was a BFI thread about the subject. Henry's definition is pretty close to David's.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...6&postcount=11

Context, of course, matters. I am no linguist; it is simply my preference that words have meanings. I understand that this is a radical position around here, but it's not one that is so interesting to me that it's worth defending further.

No. A joke is funny when the audience laughs. See the above paragraph.

One answer would be the participants in the conversation here. And yet that's not even necessary; the choice was done fairly explicitly in this case (30 year old American male).

Otherwise, I will stick with Post #677 as my final answer.

what %?

Heh. Good work.

And anyone who doesn't laugh with the rest of the audience is silly, right?

1. Wealthy: having a lot of money and possessions

Is this is a reasonable definition? How much is a "lot"?

Effect cannot be calculated =/= effect is none/equal

Difficulty of calculating effects of an entire system of governance =/= difficulty of calculating effects of specific policies.


I asked two questions, the first of which is exactly what you're now asking for. I didn't see an answer.


But what if the cost has already been paid up-front? How does a doctor with large student loans decline the subsidy of government-regulated health care, assuming government both pays for and sets the price? Quit being a doctor? And what can be known about the size of the benefit? That it's somewhere between nothing and something? If it's nothing, then it can be less than nothing, because he can be partially paying for the cost of subsidizing it, correct? So what do we know?


Apparently, you don't have to solve a general case of economic calculation to be pretty sure about the effects of some policies, correct? Policies can be determined effective, as long as you can be pretty sure about the effects, correct? Then what's the problem for the central planner? He doesn't have to solve the economic calculation problem to enact effective policies - he just has to be pretty sure about some stuff.

FWIW, I don't disagree on whether you can know about the effects of specific policies, I'm just amused by how far you're willing to take this, since this refutes standard AC arguments and has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. Of course you can know the effects of some policies. If I enact a policy that says you pvn, get $10000 from the Treasury every year, the first-order effect of that policy is predictable. But this has no bearing on the larger question here of who deserves what - maybe ElliotR is helped by policy X and policy Y, but hurt by policy C and policy D. So what now? If your contention is that such policy is inherently illegitimate, how do we know if anyone is a net beneficiary or not? My contention has always about effects of the entire system of governance, because that's the only thing that matters for the larger discourse here.

Effects are also much more obvious when you look in the aggregate - if you subsidize behavior X, behavior X will become more common, but whether specific individuals are helped or not is much more difficult to discern. It's odd that you claim to be able to solve a much more difficult problem, while arguing that the central planner can't solve a much easier one.


What are those specific subsidies you're sure about?


So shifting the goalpost is fine as long as you're the one doing it? Why, then, were you accusing me of shifting the goalpost? Are you admitting that your accusation was wrong and you were the one guilty of it?

Properly refuting this is way beyond the scope of this thread, so even though there's almost nothing close to right above, let's assume that you are right about everything. What does this have anything to do with money creation benefiting those who first get the money and how it's easy to figure out who's a net beneficiary of this process? You're effectively saying that inflation allows a game to be played and the winners of this game benefit at the expense of the losers. This is generally a restatement of what I was saying earlier:

Furthermore, since you believe that you understand this process better than others and are able to profit from the bubble both ways, you must, then, believe yourself to be one of the winners, or beneficiaries of the system. Correct? Despite not being able to get your hand on the newly created money first?

Well, in addition to this being a poor analogy from the start, we've now switched the roles of comedian and audience.

I've already answered this (to my satisfaction) above. But let me try a different approach.

Consider the origin of this thread: I do not think that you would be able to convince most people making substantially less than $200K that most people making substantially more than $200K are not rich. That was the relevant context.

There is a range of reasonable beliefs. Where we find them to be unreasonable is something like the problem of sorites. To give one example, look at mjkidd opposing $250K only to propose $300K earlier in this thread.

I'm mostly replying just because this was bumped, and I'll strive to make this my last post on this tangent. It's not interesting enough to me to discuss further.

*

Edited to promote nonviolence.

I never "violently" opposed 250k. I said that I wouldn't always consider a family of 5 making 250k rich, depending on where they lived.

edit: I guess I should make sure to quote Sholar's posts in the future.

those who get the money first get all the benefits of counterfeiting. those who arent close to the counterfeiting process lose.

the winning in this sense is different. the early receivers of government money or contracts are benefiting in a way i cant. my connections are not quite the same and the strength of my theory is not directly correlated to my ability to make those connections. merely knowing someone else is receiving that money doesnt mean i can have access to its fruits.

the way id benefit from the boom bust is sensing economic trends and making bets, as would any speculator. even having the right theory doesnt mean those bets will be successful because there is an element of uncertainty which is difficult to quantify, namely human action in addition to environmental uncertainty. the art of predicting this is where most profits are made. sensing bubbles and determining their length, magnitude and scope in time are related but still very different.