*State of the Union Address*

[Didactic]

something being infinite doesn't mean it is easy to come by
creation of wealth is a product of hard work, ingenuity, and luck
try it sometime you might just find out how to create wealth instead of expecting it to be handed to you

Good to see conservative pundits are doing their job of propagandizing the population.

The creation of wealth has nothing do do with either of those three things; wealth creation is an economic phenomenon with known causes. You are confusing macroeconomics with microeconomics.

[Endus]

something being infinite doesn't mean it is easy to come by

That's exactly what it means. "Infinite" means "without limits". If wealth were infinite, it would be completely meaningless. The entire POINT of wealth is that it IS finite. Currency is a means to measure the flow of limited resources. If said resources were infinite, meaning wealth were infinite, we wouldn't need currency or wealth in the first place. That's why gasoline is getting more expensive as it becomes more and more difficult to produce; it's NOT an infinite resource, and carries value because of that.

The entire science of economics relies on the concept that wealth and resources are finite.

[ptwonline]

wrong again
wealth redistribution stifles incentive and productivity. why should a low income worker produce more to create him self more wealth when it is just handed to him and why should a high income individual want to produce more wealth when it will be just taken from him

It only stifles incentive if you take so much away that the additional effort is not worth the gain. At 90% marginal tax rate I could see it. But at under 40%? You're telling me that a rich man won't seek to make another $10M because he'll only get to keep roughly half of it after all the taxes? Especially when making more money does not necessarily require undue additional labor on his part? It's not like he's sitting there with a hand crank producing widgets and has to work twice as long to make twice as many.

And why would low wages spur productivity? Know what spurs productivity from workers? Better training, better equipment, better treatment, and competition for your job. None of that is really boosted by paying an employee less. When you pay an employee less all they do is have less to spend, and may have to pick up additional jobs.

[Didactic]

That's exactly what it means. "Infinite" means "without limits". If wealth were infinite, it would be completely meaningless. The entire POINT of wealth is that it IS finite. Currency is a means to measure the flow of limited resources. If said resources were infinite, meaning wealth were infinite, we wouldn't need currency or wealth in the first place.

To use a bad analogy, it's like the human population; it can reproduce itself, just like wealth can, but it is not infinite.

[Tinykong]

something being infinite doesn't mean it is easy to come by
creation of wealth is a product of hard work, ingenuity, and luck
try it sometime you might just find out how to create wealth instead of expecting it to be handed to you

Circumstances of birth and luck shouldn't dictate one's ability to earn a living. No one is suggesting that people be paid $100/hr for sweeping with a broom, but people who work full time shouldn't be below the poverty line, or even close to it.

[Endus]

To use a bad analogy, it's like the human population; it can reproduce itself, just like wealth can, but it is not infinite.

And you don't get the population to grow faster by making sure the prettiest (wealthiest) people are the ones having babies. You get the population to grow faster by making sure EVERYONE can afford to have a family and is free to screw like bunnies. Same with the economy.

You can't have a consumer-based market economy if the consumers don't have enough money to consume.

[ptwonline]

something being infinite doesn't mean it is easy to come by
creation of wealth is a product of hard work, ingenuity, and luck
try it sometime you might just find out how to create wealth instead of expecting it to be handed to you

I think you are mistaking "infinite" for "unlimited".

Wealth is not infinite because it cannot be and actually exist in the universe. If wealth was infinite you would not even be able to write down the amount of money that exists because that number would not fit in the universe. It is unlimited in the sense that it has no hard limits placed upon it, and can continue to grow if conditions for it to grow are in place.

[Didactic]

And you don't get the population to grow faster by making sure the prettiest (wealthiest) people are the ones having babies. You get the population to grow faster by making sure EVERYONE can afford to have a family and is free to screw like bunnies. Same with the economy.

You can't have a consumer-based market economy if the consumers don't have enough money to consume.

How DARE you bring logic into a thread dedicated to hating on Obama!

[Vyxn]

When high-income workers obtain more wealth, they tend to spend it on luxury products, or hoard it, or send it overseas.

And who produces those luxury items? and luxury items are sold at a high profit margin because quality trumps price there for the workers who produce those items are paid more to insure the quarity of those items
And there we go again with another thinking the rich burry their money in the backyard the rich invest their money there for business are able to use that investment capital to either start or expand
And as it has been explained before we live in global market what helps other nations economy will help yours

[Endus]

I think you are mistaking "infinite" for "unlimited".

Wealth is not infinite because it cannot be and actually exist in the universe. If wealth was infinite you would not even be able to write down the amount of money that exists because that number would not fit in the universe. It is unlimited in the sense that it has no hard limits placed upon it, and can continue to grow if conditions for it to grow are in place.

And even if unlimited, the amount of wealth actually in play at any given time is limited. The economy can grow from that point, because it's not a hard limit, but the way to do so is to encourage growth, and for a market economy, that means ensuring that the consumer base has plenty of power to consume. Money itself isn't even a thing; it's a representation of a thing. Holding on to it stifles the economy. It isn't "used up", when you buy something, the person you bought it from can then use that money to buy something else. The faster and more often it's exchanged, the more wealth exists, even when the money supply doesn't change.

[Didactic]

And who produces those luxury items? and luxury items are sold at a high profit margin because quality trumps price there for the workers who produce those items are paid more to insure the quarity of those items
And there we go again with another thinking the rich burry their money in the backyard the rich invest their money there for business are able to use that investment capital to either start or expand
And as it has been explained before we live in global market what helps other nations economy will help yours

The rich do -not- invest their money in business, or rather they do so rarely; most of the time, they are as I said spending it on luxury products, speculating on derivatives (basically economic masturbation) or putting it in offshore accounts to dodge taxes.

[Purlina]

And who produces those luxury items? and luxury items are sold at a high profit margin because quality trumps price there for the workers who produce those items are paid more to insure the quarity of those items

Luxury goods don't have a high turn over, thus your slowing down the circulation of wealth.

[Endus]

And who produces those luxury items? and luxury items are sold at a high profit margin because quality trumps price there for the workers who produce those items are paid more to insure the quarity of those items
And there we go again with another thinking the rich burry their money in the backyard the rich invest their money there for business are able to use that investment capital to either start or expand
And as it has been explained before we live in global market what helps other nations economy will help yours

Trickle-down economics has been so thoroughly disproven as a theory that it's hard to accept that people still bring it up, even reworded as you did here.

Investment helps the wealthy. It ensures that the remaining growth of the economy is allocated to their own pockets as much as possible. This is why unemployment is still so high, while the GDP is soaring and wealth inequality is higher than it's ever been. Because the current system helps rich people get richer, at the expense of everyone else. It's parasitic. They're very successful parasites, but that doesn't mean they aren't parasites.

The rich aren't better at spending money than the middle class. Not by a long shot. Nor are we talking about making the wealthy not-wealthy, just reducing wealth inequality to reasonable levels.

[Felya420]

Wealth IS inherently finite. Otherwise, we'd all have infinite money. It's not static, which isn't the same thing, nor is that anything required of "liberal economic ideology". Which isn't even a thing.

He defined professors and educators as liberals early in the thread. So, according to him, the liberal economic ideology, is the sort of economics you learn in school. Which I assume means the alternative, is the one he makes up as he goes along.

[Tinykong]

On the higher education front, I'd like to see something being done about current student loan debt, helping future generations is great, but there are easily 10 years of graduating classes stuck with Federally backed student loans that cannot be refinanced. Before people claim "ur dumb, read the contract," realize that this "consolidation" was buried in a stack of papers to rival a home mortgage. I remember mine quite clearly, each semester of school was 2 separate loans, and I wound up writing 10 checks a month to the same company, who often lost a few of them and stuck on late fees and other stuff. Consolidating to one monthly payment made a lot of sense, except, by doing so you agreed to never be able to refinance or lower the interest rate, except that was buried in the terms. 4 years later, I'm still paying 10% interest on a federal student loan.

I deferred two years after school because I wasn't able to find a job, and as of today, I've paid more in interest than the original value of the loan. Too bad I didn't understand financing back then like I do today.

[ptwonline]

The rich do -not- invest their money in business, or rather they do so rarely; most of the time, they are as I said spending it on luxury products, speculating on derivatives (basically economic masturbation) or putting it in offshore accounts to dodge taxes.

The rich do invest their money in businesses, but a lot of it is not for new business investment but secondary investment. Basically like putting you money in Apple. It's not really funding job growth--it's funding the growth of share prices. This can eventually have some positive economic effect (incentive to create companies in the first place, profit made from investment growth can be spent) but it's a lot slower than the benefit from initial investments and from money put into consumer spending.

[Didactic]

He defined professors and educators as liberals early in the thread. So, according to him, the liberal economic ideology, is the sort of economics you learn in school. Which I assume means the alternative, is the one he makes up as he goes along.

I'd be very scared if there was a field of economics that wasn't based on academia...

Oh wait, trickle-down. /cry

[Vyxn]

It only stifles incentive if you take so much away that the additional effort is not worth the gain. At 90% marginal tax rate I could see it. But at under 40%? You're telling me that a rich man won't seek to make another $10M because he'll only get to keep roughly half of it after all the taxes? Especially when making more money does not necessarily require undue additional labor on his part? It's not like he's sitting there with a hand crank producing widgets and has to work twice as long to make twice as many.

And why would low wages spur productivity? Know what spurs productivity from workers? Better training, better equipment, better treatment, and competition for your job. None of that is really boosted by paying an employee less. When you pay an employee less all they do is have less to spend, and may have to pick up additional jobs.

And that is up to the individual to decide if it is worth the effort to produce more if a percentage if it will be taken away so what you think is fair at 40% another will feel that it is unfair so it cant be measured
lets look at France the raised their top end rate to 75% and millionaires left France by the boat full then we have California that raised its rate and combined with federal and local tax the high end is paying over 50% and they are leaving in droves also
So you need to find the happy medium well it is worth the risk because no matter how little you raise it some will leave but question is how many and are you actually decreasing your tax base there for you are actually taking in less tax money then you did before you raised the rate

[ptwonline]

On the higher education front, I'd like to see something being done about current student loan debt, helping future generations is great, but there are easily 10 years of graduating classes stuck with Federally backed student loans that cannot be refinanced. Before people claim "ur dumb, read the contract," realize that this "consolidation" was buried in a stack of papers to rival a home mortgage. I remember mine quite clearly, each semester of school was 2 separate loans, and I wound up writing 10 checks a month to the same company, who often lost a few of them and stuck on late fees and other stuff. Consolidating to one monthly payment made a lot of sense, except, by doing so you agreed to never be able to refinance or lower the interest rate, except that was buried in the terms. 4 years later, I'm still paying 10% interest on a federal student loan.

I deferred two years after school because I wasn't able to find a job, and as of today, I've paid more in interest than the original value of the loan. Too bad I didn't understand financing back then like I do today.

The problem is not necessarily student loans, but the fact that young people can't get jobs at all and the ones they can get are have a stagmant an ever-decreasing rate of compensation.

It's similar to Medicare and Social Security: the system was created with a different kind of economic situation in mind. Now that this economic situation has been turned on its head, the old model no longer works. So is the solution to change the model, or is it to change the underlying economic situation? One is fighting to try to pull everything back up. The other is giving up and trying to pull everything down.

[Tinykong]

The problem is not necessarily student loans, but the fact that young people can't get jobs at all and the ones they can get are have a stagmant an ever-decreasing rate of compensation.

It's similar to Medicare and Social Security: the system was created with a different kind of economic situation in mind. Now that this economic situation has been turned on its head, the old model no longer works. So is the solution to change the model, or is it to change the underlying economic situation? One is fighting to try to pull everything back up. The other is giving up and trying to pull everything down.

I'm pretty lucky, I went to a public school and my debt isn't too bad. I know people at my work who went to for profit institutions who are paying $1000+ a month for their loans, most of which is just capitalized interest from the first year of school that accrued during the last few years.

I don't know what the government can do about higher education, but it's too expensive and loans are a huge burden. I don't want it to be forgiven, I'd just like to be able to refinance it so that I'm not paying $120 a month in interest when a current loan today would be almost 1/5 of that.