Next Time Obama Boasts About The "Recovery", Show Him This Chart

[acptulsa]

Investment in the means of production makes there more productivity and everybody wealthier? Did you get that from liberals who say the EXACT SAME THING by trying to justify government investment in means of production??

Investment in the means of production leads to production. Malinvestment in the means of production leads to low production. No matter who does it. Government is more likely to make malinvestment because government will survive malinvestment.

And when are you going to do us a favor and learn to speak English?

[Zippyjuan]

Some would argue that markets were freer 100 years ago and yet they had the same concentration of wealth we are seeing today.

Free markets don't promote even distributions of wealth. It tends to concentrate it.

[acptulsa]

Some would argue that markets were freer 100 years ago...

There's no accounting for ignorance. 95 years ago the government controlled every railroad in this nation.

There's no accounting for ignorance, but at least we can call out those paid to spread and reinforce it.

[PRB]

There's no accounting for ignorance. 95 years ago the government controlled every railroad in this nation.

There's no accounting for ignorance, but at least we can call out those paid to spread and reinforce it.

So the market is NOT freer today? or is it?

[juleswin]

There's no accounting for ignorance. 95 years ago the government controlled every railroad in this nation.

There's no accounting for ignorance, but at least we can call out those paid to spread and reinforce it.

Ofc they did, now they just regulate all the railroads in the country and just own or regulate 99% of everything else in the economy. Yes the people were definitely freer 100 yrs ago in this country.

Some would argue that markets were freer 100 years ago and yet they had the same concentration of wealth we are seeing today.

Free markets don't promote even distributions of wealth. It tends to concentrate it.

Its called free markets for a reason. However unlikely, its quite possible for wealth to be natural concentrated at the top in a free market environment but when you have govt policies artificially pushing money to the top, then its govt's fault for income inequality. Remember, we just had a freer market not a free market 100 yrs ago so the wealth distribution can still be from govt manipulation. Wasn't last year the 100th anniversary of the Federal reserve?

[PRB]

Investment in the means of production leads to production. Malinvestment in the means of production leads to low production. No matter who does it. Government is more likely to make malinvestment because government will survive malinvestment.

And when are you going to do us a favor and learn to speak English?

So then trickle down only works when businesses didn't make the same mistakes as government in malinvestment, AND they don't survive malinvestment?

[PRB]

Ofc they did, now they just regulate all the railroads in the country and just own or regulate 99% of everything else in the economy. Yes the people were definitely freer 100 yrs ago in this country.

Of course they were, this video proves it! Videos don't lie!

http://youtu.be/ZdvRNdGlgzY

See? No blacks on the streets, nobody is homeless, no gun violence, no IRS agents chasing down tax evaders,

[acptulsa]

So then trickle down only works...

You didn't see me say it ever works.

...when businesses didn't make the same mistakes as government in malinvestment, AND they don't survive malinvestment?

You want me to talk about what happens when businesses don't survive the malinvestments they don't make?

[PRB]

You didn't see me say it ever works.



You want me to talk about what happens when businesses don't survive the malinvestments they don't make?

No, I want you to talk about what happens to other people when businesses dont survive the malinvestments businesses made.

[acptulsa]

No, I want you to talk about what happens to other people when businesses dont survive the malinvestments businesses made.

They get opportunity. They have a chance to do it right. The weeds die, and the corn gets more sunlight.

Whereas when government makes malinvestment every citizen who failed to overthrow it suffers for it.

If you actually want to know more, rather than wanting be an attention whore or just wanting to derail another good thread, and you can't make the forum search engine work so you can see how often it has already been explained, why not start a thread on that topic?

Because I just called you out, and if you continue this attempted threadjack your true colors will be rather obvious.

[Acala]

Investment in the means of production makes there more productivity and everybody wealthier? Did you get that from liberals who say the EXACT SAME THING by trying to justify government investment in means of production??

Not sure I have heard much about government investment in the means of production from anyone. I have heard almost everyone talking about government spending on first order goods as an economic stimulus and also government giving money to people to spend on first order goods as a stimulus, but the idea that what drives growth is production and not consumption is not popular among Keynesians.

The idea that the accumulation of capital leads to investment in, and improvement of, the means of production, which in turn leads to more production, which leads to economic growth and greater wealth for everyone is the fundamental premise of capitalism The relative wealth of the west is due entirely to allowing this principle to function.

[Acala]

Some would argue that markets were freer 100 years ago and yet they had the same concentration of wealth we are seeing today.

Free markets don't promote even distributions of wealth. It tends to concentrate it.

Free markets tend to make everyone wealthier relative to unfree markets. Uneven distribution is irrelevant as long as the pie keeps getting bigger. The question of even distribution is based purely on envy. Envy is a vice and not a sound bais for economic policy.

[Pericles]

Free markets tend to make everyone wealthier relative to unfree markets. Uneven distribution is irrelevant as long as the pie keeps getting bigger. The question of even distribution is based purely on envy. Envy is a vice and not a sound bais for economic policy.

From my point of view, the key issue is barriers to entry of the market. Wealth concentration is only an issue if it can create a barrier to competition.

[Acala]

From my point of view, the key issue is barriers to entry of the market. Wealth concentration is only an issue if it can create a barrier to competition.

Entrance barriers are a huge problem and one of the oldest and most pervasive tactics of crony-capitalists. And I think you are right that they play a big role in wealth concentration.

[Zippyjuan]

From my point of view, the key issue is barriers to entry of the market. Wealth concentration is only an issue if it can create a barrier to competition.

Somebody comes up with a great product and it earns lots of money for them. Now they have natural advantages over others. One- they have more money then can invest into developing other ideas to make them even more money or into better efficiencies allowing them to produce it at a lower cost- making it harder on competition without such economies of scale. Two- they can afford to sell any new (or existing) item cheaper than others who would compete with them because if they want, they can sell the product at a loss longer- forcing out competition. Or they can buy out other businesses to expand their own lines.

[PRB]

From my point of view, the key issue is barriers to entry of the market. Wealth concentration is only an issue if it can create a barrier to competition.

no $#@!, lol

[LibForestPaul]

A free market means no one and no thing is too big to fail. Merit based instead of cronyism. If you want to read about a centralized planned economy, look to the old soviet union. That is where this country is headed. Inefficiencies, especially inefficiencies in the financial sector, need to die. In the old Soviet union, this never occurred. This is precisely what is happening currently in the United States. It will die, it will just be a catastrophe instead of a correction.

[Vanguard101]

Most economists, even libertarians, admit the reagan era was great overall in terms of our economy. How does this chart help us? In fact, it only discredits us because the more left-wingers had better data. Not to mention that real income grew by 4k in the 80s. These charts make zero sense in my eyes from a laissez-faire approach. I understand the destruction of the dollar but to say that certain eras were still terrible is kinda stretching. That second graph even shows the 1 percent just flying during the 20s and that was arguably our best era in American History. The 80s at least helped the middle-class and poor according to the second chart.

[acptulsa]

Somebody comes up with a great product and it earns lots of money for them. Now they have natural advantages over others. One- they have more money then can invest into developing other ideas to make them even more money or into better efficiencies allowing them to produce it at a lower cost- making it harder on competition without such economies of scale. Two- they can afford to sell any new (or existing) item cheaper than others who would compete with them because if they want, they can sell the product at a loss longer- forcing out competition. Or they can buy out other businesses to expand their own lines.

But there's even more choice available today: Four, they can buy enough congressmen and senators to get a law passed saying that anyone who brings out a new one must get three trillion dollars of safety testing done on it before they're allowed to unleash it on an unsuspecting public.

Most economists, even libertarians, admit the reagan era was great overall in terms of our economy. How does this chart help us? In fact, it only discredits us because the more left-wingers had better data. Not to mention that real income grew by 4k in the 80s. These charts make zero sense in my eyes from a laissez-faire approach. I understand the destruction of the dollar but to say that certain eras were still terrible is kinda stretching. That second graph even shows the 1 percent just flying during the 20s and that was arguably our best era in American History. The 80s at least helped the middle-class and poor according to the second chart.

Firstly, as has been pointed out in this very thread, the first chart is apples and the second is oranges. Secondly, and has been pointed out by every intellectually honest member of this forum, Reagan may have sounded like a free market libertarian, but he wasn't one. The eighties were anything but some kind of laissez-faire, sound money golden era. Thirdly, the second chart doesn't say the 1980s helped the middle class. The Zippychart doesn't even show the middle class. It merely myopically compares the rich, the richer and the richest like anyone in the whole world even gives a $#@!.

I think Z2.0 posts these charts in hopes that no one will look at what they actually show. He reckons not on me.

[Madison320]

There's no accounting for ignorance. 95 years ago the government controlled every railroad in this nation.

There's no accounting for ignorance, but at least we can call out those paid to spread and reinforce it.

Whoa! You've gone off the rails! The US was much more economically free 100 years ago. It's not even close. The government was tiny back then. The US became BY FAR the the richest country in the world in the late 1800s-early 1900s and we were BY FAR the most economically free.

[acptulsa]

Whoa! You've gone off the rails! The US was much more economically free 100 years ago. It's not even close. The government was tiny back then. The US became BY FAR the the richest country in the world in the late 1800s-early 1900s and we were BY FAR the most economically free.

Look up Edward Mandell House some time. Look up the U.S. Railway Administration. Did you think Harding and Coolidge set off the Roaring Twenties just by being there and looking good?

It was the Wilson Administration, not me, which went off the rails, dude. If you want to use history to sell libertarianism, that's the right spirit and the right era, but you, you know, really ought to bone up on the stuff a bit before some Keynesian prog pwns you.

[Vanguard101]

But there's even more choice available today: Four, they can buy enough congressmen and senators to get a law passed saying that anyone who brings out a new one must get three trillion dollars of safety testing done on it before they're allowed to unleash it on an unsuspecting public.



Firstly, as has been pointed out in this very thread, the first chart is apples and the second is oranges. Secondly, and has been pointed out by every intellectually honest member of this forum, Reagan may have sounded like a free market libertarian, but he wasn't one. The eighties were anything but some kind of laissez-faire, sound money golden era. Thirdly, the second chart doesn't say the 1980s helped the middle class. The Zippychart doesn't even show the middle class. It merely myopically compares the rich, the richer and the richest like anyone in the whole world even gives a $#@!.

I think Z2.0 posts these charts in hopes that no one will look at what they actually show. He reckons not on me.

Half of what you said doesn't even apply to my argument. I'm not defending Reagan or saying the 80s was anything close to laissez-faire. But to say the economy during that time wasn't good or that the middle class didn't thrive is absurd. If you make 150k, you are basically middle class or what we would want middle class to be. Their income rose during that era. Again, I can find numerous policy reports from libertarian economists showing real income rose on average for Americans.

[acptulsa]

Half of what you said doesn't even apply to my argument. I'm not defending Reagan or saying the 80s was anything close to laissez-faire. But to say the economy during that time wasn't good or that the middle class didn't thrive is absurd. If you make 150k, you are basically middle class or what we would want middle class to be. Their income rose during that era. Again, I can find numerous policy reports from libertarian economists showing real income rose on average for Americans.

That Zippychart specifically says it's talking about only the top ten percent. It's a broad definition of 'middle class' that includes everyone but the top and bottom five percent. In any case, you can't argue with a straight face that the top ten percent includes the entirety of the middle class.

And my recollection of the 1980s includes one holy hell of a lot of talk about the disappearing middle class. And it didn't tend to go along the lines of, 'Thank God the middle class stopped drying up and blowing away...'

[PRB]

Half of what you said doesn't even apply to my argument. I'm not defending Reagan or saying the 80s was anything close to laissez-faire. But to say the economy during that time wasn't good or that the middle class didn't thrive is absurd. If you make 150k, you are basically middle class or what we would want middle class to be. Their income rose during that era. Again, I can find numerous policy reports from libertarian economists showing real income rose on average for Americans.

Making $150K doesn't make you upper class? So your definition of a "good" economy is that even poor people made good money?

[buenijo]

so you mean Occupy Wall Street was right about 99% vs 1%?

Yes. They identified a problem, but then suggested ridiculous solutions.

[buenijo]

This chart is the natural outcome whenever you debase a currency. Currency debasement acts as a pump, pumping value from the poor to the rich. We have taken to calling it a "consumer based economy" and learned to accept built in obsolescence as "the cost of doing business" rather than demanding true value. Thus the dollar shrunk, and the wealthy kept more of them. The value is pumped to the top, and the people who get the new dollars always get them at their higher value while the people who get them down the line get them at their lower value, thus reciprocating the value pump and making the poor poorer and the rich richer.

It is not the free market creating this situation, it is the Federal Reserve's broken monetary policy. However the situation itself is extremely real. To deny the expanding wealth gap and growing classist society in the US, is to assert blindness to the vast majority of Americans, because they see it with their own eyes and they know better.

True - but it's even worse than this. The process is leveraged due to the effects of malinvestment. The average person sees not only the value of their savings and income lessened, but employment prospects are adversely affected and investment and entrepreneurial alternatives are wrought with undue risk.

[otherone]

From my point of view, the key issue is barriers to entry of the market. Wealth concentration is only an issue if it can create a barrier to competition.

have some rep, brother.

Competition from scrappy little fellers is the natural counter to big business.
That's why big business created government...

[loveshiscountry]

No such thing as trickle down economics. The idea is less money given to government to spend wastefully.

[Madison320]

Look up Edward Mandell House some time. Look up the U.S. Railway Administration. Did you think Harding and Coolidge set off the Roaring Twenties just by being there and looking good?

It was the Wilson Administration, not me, which went off the rails, dude. If you want to use history to sell libertarianism, that's the right spirit and the right era, but you, you know, really ought to bone up on the stuff a bit before some Keynesian prog pwns you.

What are you talking about? 100 years ago the federal government was like 2% of GDP, now it's close to 30% and that's with an inflated GDP. 100 years ago we had no income tax, no medicare, no social security, no EPA, etc, etc, etc.

[Zippyjuan]

I think sometimes he disagrees with things simply because I was the one who posted it.