So I know we're not supposed to talk politics - Presidential Election - Poll

"If a person who has virtually nothing is given a large sum of money, within a very short time that person will have nothing again. If we divided all the money in the world equally, in a short time the rich would be rich again, and the poor would be poor." - The people might change but the ratios would not.

 

Saudi's come to mind.

Have we cross checked Exitr's IP with KMB58?

fcuking face palm 🤦🏻‍♂️

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN18K15Y

fcuking face palm 🤦🏻‍♂️

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN18K15Y

 

Also a fan of his law enforcement tactics...Agent Orange is determined to be the centre of every news cycle until he quits.

fcuking face palm 🤦🏻‍♂️

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN18K15Y

 

 

Wtfsauce?!

Yeah... and? The world will never be equal. Somebody will always be born taller, better looking, a bigger dick, or any of a thousand other natural abilities, many of which can be overcome with hard work and determination. IMO the world would be far better off if we put more effort into trying to motivate the 'normal' folks than make them feel like victims of the system, and beat down those who are successful. 99.999% of the time people are victims of nothing but their own life choices, for better or worse, myself included.

 

Looking around this place at the people who are really well off, I can only think of 2 who were born into significant wealth. The rest of them came from little, to virtually nothing and built what they have. And you think because they achieved something, were gang raped with taxes over their lifetime, they should have their estate pillaged?

 

What if that tax affects a business, they can't afford the cash outlay, and ultimately it forces the closing of the business and layoff of many workers?

 

What a person does with their $$$ when they die is up to them, and the gov't needs to keep their hands off of it. If they want to leave it to their children to build or squander, it's their choice.

 

fwiw, I recall reading that it's the 3rd generation that really pisses away the fortune. 2nd likely saw their parents build it and were ingrained with a residual work ethic that is easily lost.

 

I've had an ass full of the entire inequality and victim mentality, it's the plague that will be the undoing of this country. If you want something then go fcuking get it, if you're too scared, lazy, or w/e, then come to terms with it and accept the life you choose.

 

My man

 

More shit about sessions not disclosing contact with the russians

Financial equality LOL

 

It blows my mind how someone capable to access the internet and type does not have the mental capacity to figure out how ridiculous that sounds, not just ridiculous but also absolutely impossible, it will NEVER happen because it can not happen, you can legislate all you want, take all of the money from a wealthy entrepreneur and give it to a bum, the wealthy guy will be back on his/her feet before the bum had enough time to burn his/hers new found fortune, what will happen then? Take it again from the producer and feed the wasteful consumer? When is the vicious cycle going to stop? When will the producer say f*ck it and walk?

 

The communists tried that, tell me how did it work out for them.

 

There will always be inequality and rightly so, work harder and smarter if you want more, the opportunity is there, just because someone has more than you it doesn't mean they stole it from you, it also doesn't mean they owe you anything, it also doesn't necessarily mean that it's more difficult for you to advance financially, those who have don't build walls in front of those who don't, it's just an excuse, I'd starve before I'd raise my hand and ask for something I haven't earned myself, the embarrassment would be impossible for me to cope with.

 

 

I don't believe anyone said anything about financial equality and taxes as a parity of income and wealth. It's equality discussed in terms of things like having equal access to healthcare, education, public services, and other opportunities and reasonable standards of life. You have to take into account things like wage growth and inflation. It's a very complex and difficult thing to figure out. It's why our economic predictions for growth, inflation, and wages never seem to come to fruition even when the data says it should be happening.

 

Of course there should be people who are wealthier than others due to hard work, talent, or even just luck. Why would that not be the case? You speak in the extremes as if total confiscation of wealth is at hand. No one is of the opinion that we need to make the middle-class rich and the rich middle-class. Well, some are, but they're nutjobs.

 

Fortis, even if someone is self-made and started from the bottom, they no doubt benefited from the tax dollars of the rich, whether they raised there hand or not. They went to school, they made use of infrastructure and public services. Bill Gate's tax dollars made its way into the public, middle-class school that yielded some other self-made millionaire 20 years later. There is a difference between lazy people asking for handouts and a sound tax code that distributes wealth in the most beneficial way possible to improve society across many tax brackets. Taxes are not just to take care of the young poor. It takes care of the elderly and retired as well, people who worked hard their entire lives, but just never got rich. It pays for infrastructure outside of the rich neighborhoods that the wealthy benefit from and use. It pays for wars and security. It pays for a lot of stuff.

 

I've paid more in tax in one year that my mother paid her entire life. That said, there much wealthier people than us in the neighborhood growing up, paying much more tax than my family did, but I got to grow up in a nice, clean, safe suburb with good schools. Naturally, the future is what you make of it and you still need a little bit of luck to go along with your hard work. I've never asked for anything and would even hate it is someone let me win at something, but I cannot pretend that I didn't benefit for those more fortunate than me via their tax dollars.

 

The poorest class benefits from everyone, but the middle-class and the rich benefit quite equally from each other because neither alone could finance the costs of the entire country, and they make use, directly and indirectly, of a lot of the same stuff. In fact, as we see with the horrendous budgets around the world, even together they can't afford it. The middle-class benefits from the spending of the wealthy and the wealthy benefits from the spending of the middle-class. The poor is interwoven in there as well.

 

The economy is a very interconnected cycle of wealth that hits every income class. In some sense, it's kind of amazing that human's got modern economic systems functioning at all. Money supply, the velocity of money, interest rates, "growth"... it's all very "space cash" in some sense and will be very interesting to see where crypto leads. In any case, distribution of wealth via taxes if beneficial to even the ones who pay the most. I'd also point out that even the rich are living off the more-rich. Everyone millionaire on here is living off of some hundred millionaire's or billionaire's taxes.

 

In the end, it's nothing to get up in arms about. Taxes are taxes and they are due. I don't know any rich people whose lifestyle has been effected that much by taxes. I wouldn't pay any taxes if I didn't have to, but that's simply because I'm selfish and I'd let some other sucker foot the bill if they're willing to. In reality though, I understand the importance of taxes and why the high earners have to pay more. The tax code needs a lot of work, but so does society in general. The US budget is out of control and I see no sign that Donald Trump will fix that and it's obvious congress will strike down most of it. Unfortunately it may never get fixed without some very significant technological advances or a miraculous change in human nature and American values.

 

I do think someone here posted something rather inaccurate about the current government spending under Trump and the economic situation. The reality is that a surplus under Trump comes from the prior budgets and a surplus isn't anything new. The US often has months of surpluses. It's just a cash flow thing. Most economic conditions are due to things long since in place. You can't take credit for trends that have long since been established.

 

Well, I definitely need to get out of here. I've posted far more than I ever planned to post on forums and I don't want to get dragged into political discussion. Much more interesting stuff in the world, like science and engineering.

 

Cheers and have a good evening! We're all pretty rich on here, so no hard feelings, right?

This is the most polite bitchslap session ive ever seen. And ive seen plenty of bitches get slapped

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately it may never get fixed without some very significant technological advances or a miraculous change in human nature and American values.

It will happen. Thanks to the dawn of AI, clean and cheap energy with fusion reactors and other technological advancements.

Financial equality LOL

Yeah... and? The world will never be equal.

It will.

See my post above.

 

 

However, I feel you and anybody else who doesn´t want it. We as humans need something to distinguish us from other humans. We want to feel better than the person next door. We want to feel and think that we deserve much more because we did this and that while the other person didn´t. It is an ego thing but it was also necessary to advance civilisation come to the point were we are today. However it it won´t be anymore very shortly. Think of capitalism or the inequality economy as a vehicle that get´s us to the next stage where we don´t need it anymore.

Societies will change massively.

Interesting times ahead.

Cheers and have a good evening! We're all pretty rich on here, so no hard feelings, right?

 

What is meant by equality though? You can measure economic inequality/equality in two different ways:

 

Relative inequality: One person has more wealth than someone else

 

Absolute inequality: The actual goods and services, i.e. the actual wealth, people have access to.

 

In terms of relative wealth inequality, there will always be a high amount of that, and especially in a prosperous economy because you have lots of people who create new fortunes. In terms of absolute wealth inequality however, that continually declines and is today at the lowest point it probably has ever been because never before has the average person had access to the goods and services and standard of living that they do today. This trend will only continue as more and more advances are made in areas like energy, healthcare, manufacturing, etc...even in business we see this, for example computer technology that previously was only the purview of large businesses now has become available to small and medium-sized businesses, thus allowing those business to engage in the engineering and design that previously only the larger businesses could afford, thus increasing competition.

 

There is also a difference between taxes to fund the basic functions of government versus taxes to address some arbitrary "unfairness" in terms of the "distribution" of wealth. You mention to Fortis about going to extremes, but you inadvertently are doing this yourself. Things like infrastructure, defense, schools, etc...everyone understands taxes are needed for those except perhaps the most hardcore libertarians. What people are against are the Ivory Tower academics and politicians saying, "The rich hold 90% of the wealth and it's not fair, so we need taxes to 'fix' the problem." You mention Social Security, but Social Security is not supposed to be funded by the wealthy, it is supposed to be funded by the middle-class who benefit from it. Part of the problem with it today is the government opened up the fund years back and stole from it.

 

I would also disagree that taxes even really can make things more equal; if anything, they tend to make things more unequal even though they are done in the name of equality. If you look at the inequality economists like Thomas Piketty who claims that the United States has the highest levels of inequality in the Western world and thus needs taxes of like 80% to 90% to "fix" the problem, all that would do is create a truly unequal economic situation because the rich would become very insulated and not invest anything while the poor and middle-class would become stuck in their positions. The poor would expand as the welfare state would expand.

 

The countries that supposedly have less inequality than the U.S. tend to be the ones that actually have more, which is why you have countries like France for example where people riot constantly over such things, even though they have higher taxes devoted to inequality than the U.S. The idea behind them is that to prevent massive inequality that could lead to a revolution like the Russian revolution, you have high taxes to "redistribute" wealth so as to make things more equal. But the reality is that such high taxes tend to inhibit economic growth, insulate the rich who just protect their wealth and not invest at all, while a massive welfare state develops so you get a permanent class of poor people, while the middle-class remain stuck in their positions and suffer from lack of jobs (current France) and thus protest and riot often. Same thing happened in pre-1980s United Kingdom. We also see it happened right here at the state level in California, which has the most "progressive" taxes in the union. Consequently, California also has some of the highest wealth inequality in the nation and a huge welfare state with a class of poor living on it.

 

The United States, for having such a massive level of inequality according to the Ivory Tower folks, sure is an incredibly stable and prosperous place economically. But yet according to them, if any country is on the verge of heading to Russian revolution territory, it should be us.

On Trump mentioning about the nuclear subs, maybe there is some strategy to that; remember Trump specifically said that he was not going to do like Obama and be telling key details about what we are doing. On the other hand though, Trump in many ways is literally a big child and thus maybe just has a big mouth on this one.

This is the most polite bitchslap session ive ever seen. And ive seen plenty of bitches get slapped

 

Little things please simple minds.

 

 

It will happen. Thanks to the dawn of AI, clean and cheap energy with fusion reactors and other technological advancements.

 

 

It will.

See my post above.

 

 

However, I feel you and anybody else who doesn´t want it. We as humans need something to distinguish us from other humans. We want to feel better than the person next door. We want to feel and think that we deserve much more because we did this and that while the other person didn´t. It is an ego thing but it was also necessary to advance civilisation come to the point were we are today. However it it won´t be anymore very shortly. Think of capitalism or the inequality economy as a vehicle that get´s us to the next stage where we don´t need it anymore.

Societies will change massively.

Interesting times ahead.

 

 

As long as there is the trade of goods and services....there will always be inequality.

 

Those that provide the most value make the most money.

 

Those that consume the most value that the guy above created will spend the most money.

 

Capitalism isn't new, it has been around since the earliest recorded history. Are you saying that capitalism will go away? I respect your opinion but definitely disagree.

This "want to feel better than the person next door" is human nature that will never go away.

 

If there ever comes a time when the goal of life is to just exist and not strive to accomplish goals....I pray to god I'm not there.

Have we cross checked Exitr's IP with KMB58?

 

 

Sorry, not me. But loving his words.

 

 

So- it's never been an inequality thing in my eyes. It's merely been an argument that pay for the average person is not what it was when I was a much younger person. This does not mean I want a hand out. This is not to imply that the rich should go hand every person they pass each day a fifty. It also doesn't mean that some of you can be blatant jerks because I am comfortable enough to voice my opinion. You don't agree= that's fine. I don't need you to agree with me, I don't need you to sympathize. I'm just enjoying the conversation, offering a point of view. Will I change your mind? Probably not. But I'll still mention it because the majority of the country is likely in a similar situation as I am in where it seems that a "nice life" is barely attainable for the very upper middle class, let alone the true middle class or the bottom middle class.

 

Until recent years, a middle-middle class family could live on a single income. Having substantially more education than our parents, my wife and I should be able to earn substantially more than our parents did, in similar "worker bee" roles. Sadly, in today's dollars- we are nearly 50% light. We numerically make similar dollars, but in 2017 dollars. This is complete crap and why I feel the need to pipe up. Some of you feel that this is entitlement, I feel it is just being practical. Why should someone with more education, capability, drive- work for less? Because the world has dictated this. I hate to use the word fair.. life is not fair. But this is the ultimate shaft.

 

I feel that this has changed because the world allowed it to. The rate hikes, the increased cost of products and services across the board while relatively stagnate or even declining incomes has contributed to this and will continue to erode us as a people. Most all of you will flame back, "go earn it", and yes- you're right from one point of view. But I argue that I do earn it. I do put in those extra hours. I do work hard to improve our operation. Mediocre pay for the capability I bring= is crap. Sadly, it seems that our system (the country/world) is merely interested in warm bodies that have self segregated into this educational cast system.. the uniqueness of the person doesn't really matter, rather merely that they have a document that qualifies them for this "slightly nicer role as a peon". Every one of them is easily replaceable and there is always someone willing to do it for less. It's the ultimate coc k fight..

 

It's sickening, it's Garbage.

 

 

 

 

On Trump mentioning about the nuclear subs, maybe there is some strategy to that

 

Yes, I believe Trump disclosed that we had two nuclear subs off the N Korean coast on purpose as he wants to send a message to Kim to stop F_ing around.

Trump does not want a conflict with N. Korea, however he wants to send the message that we are not just going to watch from home and do nothing as they keep launching missiles.

Its a game of chess IMO, you keep advancing your position of strength with more and more resources until your opponent realizes their in check mate and they concede.

Sorry, not me. But loving his words.

Lol... of course you do

Lol... of course you do

 

 

 

Yup, that about sums up your reaction.

 

Two things to consider in life:

A. How is your current outlook and actions working out for you? Sounds like it isn't at all.

B. Why continue to rinse and repeat something that so clearly isn't working?

 

I smashed my thumb under a hammer once, and it sucked. Guess what, I generally make a concerted effort to not do that again. I don't try to justify to my black fingernail that the hammer conspired against us, and that my grandfathers hammer never would have done this. I was in completely control of the situation and I fucked up.

 

You're slamming your dick in a car door, repeatedly, but you're complaining about the door, the panel gaps, and the malfunctioning latch system. But you always have the option to ignore all those things and just take a step back, so your dick doesn't get smashed for the 194032 time. I fully expect you'll keep slamming the door, and telling the world about how it sucks.

 

 

So you post a selfie?

Yup, that about sums up your reaction.

 

Two things to consider in life:

A. How is your current outlook and actions working out for you? Sounds like it isn't at all.

B. Why continue to rinse and repeat something that so clearly isn't working?

 

I smashed my thumb under a hammer once, and it sucked. Guess what, I generally make a concerted effort to not do that again. I don't try to justify to my black fingernail that the hammer conspired against us, and that my grandfathers hammer never would have done this. I was in completely control of the situation and I fucked up.

 

You're slamming your dick in a car door, repeatedly, but you're complaining about the door, the panel gaps, and the malfunctioning latch system. But you always have the option to ignore all those things and just take a step back, so your dick doesn't get smashed for the 194032 time. I fully expect you'll keep slamming the door, and telling the world about how it sucks.

 

 

Your "I can't hear you" is exactly right. You refuse to take an objective look at what I'm saying.

So you post a selfie?

 

 

 

I get the sense that you are very insecure. Keep swinging all you like, I'll keep smiling at being important enough to waste your time on.

I get the sense that you are very insecure. Keep swinging all you like, I'll keep smiling at being important enough to waste your time on.

It makes me happy knowing that you are highly confused on everything , not just life in general.

It makes me happy knowing that you are highly confused on everything , not just life in general.

 

If you say so..

 

I get more pleasure out of seeing people win than I do looking down my nose at them. But hey- you wear it well. Let's see who is better off in 100 years!