I Totally Support the Occupy Movement...Follow

If we had prosperity across all economic strata, we would not be at 9% unemployment right now (and closer to 16% underemployment.)

Seems a bit silly to take economic lessons from Groucho.

So people believe that world hunger has NOTHING TO DO WITH a tiny tiny minority of people hording 80+% of the world's wealth?

Seriously?

That's totally nuts.

In theory. In reality, it probably would have gone towards some pseudo-charity's "administrative costs" or the bug nets would have been "lost" at some central African guard outpost.

That is certainly an issue, though there are now reputable organizations that work solely to rate the efficacy of these charities, both in terms of how much goes to the people and how helpful their donation is (for instance, mosquito nets are hugely beneficial in a cost to aid sense).

Far from being a perfect system, but certainly better than nothing.

Oh, and Rick Perry is insane.

My favorite part is when he uses an ad hominem attack on Mitt Romney to sidestep the issue of wealth disparity.

Except it's not that easy. Famine issues these days are caused as much, if not more so, by internal governmental issues as they are by basic lack of food.

Now, to swing that around, the Powers The Be don't help the situation in regards to treating/exploiting mineral and environmental resources in these countries.

And that $30M would just end up going to some genocidal warlords. Which, as I pointed out before (in another thread?) some more genocide would surely help a lot of these problems.

You can't eat money. Yet, you can eat grubs - for free.

Lack of food is a distribution problem.

If the gov't isn't also being ruled by those groups, yes.

Except that EVERY economic study done in the past 30 years has shown that tax breaks on the rich don't create jobs, that stimulated spending in the lower classes is the best way to stimulate an economy (which is the best way to create jobs), and that the rich have an extremely high tendency to lock up their wealth such that it fails to circulate.

But, of course, you could just ignore all that and pretend like the upper class are actually going to invest their wealth in creating jobs.

You can, but you're not going to digest it very well and get even less nutrients from it.

But you define the former to be those which agree with you and the latter to be those which disagree. It's meaningless. I could just as easily dismiss all of the economic studies which show that lowering tax rates on the rich doesn't have any positive effects on employment and overall prosperity among the rest of the people. It's a pretty weak argument though, which is why I don't do this.


I actually argue why I believe my position to be the correct one. That just seems to be much more constructive, don't you agree?

And you're the grand arbiter of what is and isn't "reliable information"?



Nope. An increase in the exchange of the fruits of one person's labors for the fruits of another. You've made the mistake of thinking that it's the dollars that matter. If you understood economic theory better, you'd see why this is wrong.



That really depends on how you define "commodities". You're looking only at "consumables", in which case your statement is true. But that's not even close to the entire range of things which can be bought and sold and certainly is not the only sole driver of economic growth.



I'm not sure how this is relevant, but sure.



Sure. I can flip this around though:

What stimulates the economy?: Production of goods which others may buy.

Who are the main producers of those goods?: The wealthy and business owners.

How much of their earnings do they put back into the economy?: Almost all of it.



What you fail to grasp is that both sides of that equation are equally important. You are proposing to reduce the money being used to produce goods in order to increase the amount of money being used to buy goods. Surely you can see how that isn't going to work very well.




You are confusing "spending" with "consuming". They are not the same thing and it would help your understanding of macro economics if you stop treating them as though they are.



No, it's not. Let me ask you a question which should illustrate why: What determines the value of the dollar you have to spend compared to the cost of the goods you want to spend it on? You're missing a whole half of the economic equation.



The fact that you think that money just "sits" anywhere is where you go horribly wrong (well, more wrong than you already were). That money is invested in ways which result in increased production and increased jobs. Where do you think the money people use to buy things comes from? Where do you think the jobs they get the money from come from? Small businesses take out loans to start or grow their businesses and they hire people. Big business does this constantly.

The large amounts of wealth that you think are idle because it's not being spent in a grocery store is what makes that grocery store have shelves full of food for you to buy in the first place. That's the "supply side" of the equation. I know that liberals work hard to pretend it doesn't exist, but you've brought this to a whole new level.



Of course it's not. If you take all the money being used to make things and give it to people so they can buy things, your economy will collapse instantly and most of your people will starve to death. I'm not even arguing that some demand side initiatives can't have value depending on the specifics of the economic conditions. But your argument rests on an assumption that the only thing that matters is how much money people have to spend on consumable items. That's just absurd. There's a balance there. If you can't acknowledge any value to money being held in the hands of the wealthy, then you are essentially arguing for a completely untenable economic agenda.


Kinda exactly like the OWS folks.

Edited, Oct 25th 2011 7:30pm by gbaji