Discussions

1 hour ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

@Dr Herbie: I'm quite happy handing out rods, I'm not happy with somebody stealing my fish in the name of equality and handing that fish to a guy with a rod.

Except that's not what i happening is it?  What's happening is that there are a lot of people who's rod have broken who need help getting new rods.  There are a lot of people who don't yet have a rod and need help to get one. There are even an unfortunate few who would be unable to fish even if they had a rod.  And there is a very small minority who don't want to bother fishing and think they can get away with parasitising everyone else.

There are a few people with more fish than they need to comfortably survive (and even a few with more fish than they can ever realistically eat in a lifetime) who just aren't letting anyone have any of theirs unless they are forced to, and even then they do their best to hide their fish so that they can't be forced to share them. In order to self-justify their lack of sharing they brand the all the people with no rods as worthless and undeserving of fish.

Herbie

2 hours ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

@ScanIAm:

So, you think I am selfish?

On the contrairy my friend.

Look at my blog, I'm sharing my inventions so that everybody can make their apps compete better with the most popular ones. Is that selfish?

Look at the Channel9 WP7 app that I created, for you among others to view ch9 content. For free. Selfish aswell?

You claim that I am wealthy because I am white, that's just racist and a insult to the hard work I've put in. I went to two colleges and four jobs to get where I am today. At my current employer we have all kinds of nationalities. They are doing exactly the same work I am doing and getting the exact same benefits and wage. I help people on their project even if it puts my own deadlines in peril and you have the nerve to call me selfish.

What I ment by that first line, is that you are claiming that they are not a part of society. That they are somekind of pest. Well, hate to bring it to you buddy, you are part of that pest. You are projecting your own frustrations on a set of people based on the amount of money that they have, that to me sounds like a bigot.

All I am proposing is that we treat all people the same. Rich and poor. Deregulate government with all it's complicated rules wich do more harm then good. Protecting businesses and multimedia tycoons with laws like PIPA and SOPA.

If you put your solutions to the test, you will see that the problem is not going to be solved but instead going to be bigger. But hey, you are free to persue your own goals.

And that you don't like me, I can understand that.

Here is a guy telling you that all you ever believed in, is not working out. It's hard to swallow. I would advise you to keep an open mind.

Oh btw, I don't judge you at all, I just think you are wrong.

It appears to me that you are happy to help individuals, but not happy to help social groups.  If you met an individual who represented the average unemployed person, you would probably feel he was a decent person who had just had a bit of bad luck, and you would probably offer help.  However, when you consider the social group of 'the unemployed' you have no sympathy for them at all.

Herbie

7 minutes ago, spivonious wrote

@cbae: My home cost about 4x my salary.

The wealthy typically buy multiple homes.

But in the example above, MC Hammer would have to buy 6 or 7 $20million homes to spend the 4x annual salary that you (and incidentally I) have paid for our homes.  I doubt he has done so.

That is the point -- 6 people earning $5million a year would spend more on homes than 1 person earning $33million a year. So a larger number of people earning a lesser amount would spread more money through the economy. The huge bias in earning that we see does NOT spread wealth as effectively as a smaller bias.  I think we still need some sort of bias to encourage people to put in the effort, but the system as I see it now looks to have gone too far. Taxing is a way to push this bias back towards the middle ground.

Herbie

@giovanni: As Ray7 says: Microsoft is a single company, but because it is comprised of a group of people you can get away with referring to Microsoft as a collection of people as well.

As long as people understand what you mean, there isn't a problem except with the occasional grammar-*.

Herbie

8 minutes ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

@cbae: I stand corrected then, he's well educated in the wrong form of economics.

*snip*

Here goes again;

It's like that movie Herbie posted. More consumers, more demand, more economy, more jobs.

More tax, more regulation, less consumers, less demand, less economy, less jobs.

@Dr Herbie:

by pleading to increase the taxes, while he should be pleading for government to back off. In tax aswell as regulation. We are on the wrong side of that curve that Proton posted. Tax and regulation are doing more harm then good. Unless you think we are on the right track in handling this crisis.

@cbae: give a man a fish and he can feed himself for a day, give him the means to fish and he will feed himself for a lifetime.

Stop giving away f*cking fish and start handing out f*cking rods!

The whole more tax means less consumers argument is entirely dependent on how that tax is spent. If it's spent on expanding infrastructure then it means more work for people which increases consumers.  If it's spent on education that means more qualified workers for our increasing service industries, which means more consumers ... etc.

Warren Buffet proposes increased tax on people once they get rich, not while they work towards being rich. I don't see how that prevents anyone from taking part.

As for fishing rods -- the majority of charities (except for those dealing with immediate famine, disease and natural disasters) are all about the teaching of fishing -- they figured out decades ago that propping people up with handouts doesn't work in the long run. 

Herbie

41 minutes ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

So why do I call Buffet a tool.

Because he has shown us that hard work, bit of luck, low tax and a free market is all that is needed to lift people out of poverty. To deny others the freedom he enjoyed to muster his wealth is nothing short of hypocritical.

Sorry for being a bit slow here -- but can you explain how he is denying freedom to others?

Herbie

22 minutes ago, Sven Groot wrote

*snip*

You finally said something I agree with. Things like climate change, or even the recession or the US's debt problem, require long-term vision to tackle. Changing everything every four years just to spite the previous administration isn't going to accomplish anything in the long run.

On the other hand, leaders who stay in power too long tend to get ideas about never leaving and having their children take over when they die ...

There has to be a limit to government terms, but yes there should be some way for creating a group to tackle these long-term issues -- I'm afraid I don't know enough about current governments to know if there is already a method for this.

Herbie

@Maddus Mattus: The benefit of government is that they are temporary -- they regularly get replaced with a new set.  While I agree that many (probably most) politicians are lining their own pockets directly and also trying their best to change political directions to further benefit themselves, their ability to do so is limited to their term in office. I would rather have temporary and changing sets of people lining their own pockets for 4 years that have a single set of people lining their own pockets for 40 years.

Plus of course, the politicians would be taxed, to keep the money circulating.

I wouldn't trust you to spend money on Sven, but I would probably trust Sven to spend money on you. That's politics, not economics. 

Herbie

@Maddus Mattus: No, that's not silly, in fact pushing the money down to cycle back up again is the whole point; pumping the money through the system provides opportunity for a wider range of people to earn some of it, releasing it from the control of the wealthy minority.  Some of it, even the majority of it, will end up back at the top where it will be re-taxed and pumped back into the system again and again and again.

Taxing across the board is valid because we all are entitled to use the services that the government provides, so we should all contribute to it. Otherwise you end up with a population that is 'kept' by the rich and that is just as unsustainable as a system where all the money eventually accrues in the control of a permanent minority.

Herbie

Sorry, been really busy for the last few days, so catching up a bit.

The argument that wealth trickles down from the top -- the problem is that it trickles when what we need is a flow (especially with the current recession).  As stated in the first video I posted, a multi-billionaire does NOT spend millions of times as much as the average person, therefore the money stagnates at the top and does not flow back down. In terms of circulation of money, 1000 millionaires would be more effective than 1 billionaire.  If money was flowing down, there wouldn't be any billionaires because they would have spent the money. The argument wasn't that tax money be given to the middle classes, it was that the tax money was invested in schemes to help the middle classes to help themselves and earn more money, and to help lower classes pull themselves up to the middle classes where they would become good little consumers, help keep the money flowing and eventually reduce the income disparity which would reduce all the social problems noted in the second video I posted.

2 hours ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

I know it sounds crazy to see hospitals as businesses providing a service, but if you take out all emotion and look at it from a pure logical viewpoint, then a hospital is just another business. And businesses should be run on sound numbers, if people can choose to spend their money in hospital X instead of hospital Y you will create competition, and competition always leads to a better product for the consumer.

Yes, it does sound crazy -- especially when you have stated that roads are important enough to be run by the government, but apparently your view is that health isn't as important as roads?

As has already been pointed out, when you're having a heart attack, or a stroke, or have just been pulled out of a car crash, you don't shop around, you just want to go to the nearest hospital. Health care is not a business, it is a service.

Herbie