If All The Wealth In The U.S. Were Divided Up Equally ...

Perhaps in universities, thought I am skeptical. Certainly not in government-run public schools or their "accredited" counterparts.

 

Yes, through entrepreneurial activities and market processes that efficiently transform resources that people desire as goods and services.

 

Verry simply by producing more value than you consume.

 

I know right? Like how Lincoln started crony capitalism during the civil war that lead to the first monopolies in the country? Like how I say things like that?

 

money never ceases to circulate Except what the percent the government insists the banks have to keep on hand. No one smart shoves money in a mattress where its value is constantly eroded by inflation.

 

Do you have any idea how absurd that statement is? How are they making payments on four mansions and doing the routine maintenance and not spending more than the average poor person? Hell for that matter do not champagne and caviar cost substantially more than beer and pretzels?

 

I haven't read this whole thread, but has anyone pointed out yet that a great portion of that wealth exists in solid and intangible assets that cannot be redistributed easily? Real estate is probably the largest solid asset that cannot be redistributed easily (how does one redistribute a $10 million New York condo if there's no one to buy it?), but there are also factories, machinery, farms, mines, etc., that account for wealth that exists but cannot be redistributed equally among people. And then there are the intangible sources of wealth such as pension plans and future payouts that cannot be redistributed without eliminating the sources of that wealth. Same goes for the wealth held by corporations... if you liquidate the corporations, 90% of the earning capacity of those corporations goes out the window. So how much LIQUID assets are there in the US that the redistributors could actually redistribute to their undeserving patrons? According to this page (http://rutledgecapital.com/2009/05/24/total-assets-of-the-us-economy-188-trillion-134xgdp/), about $40 trillion in liquid assets were held by US households in 2008 (that's not counting corporate holdings so they can continue to generate future wealth) compared to $200 trillion in total US wealth. That works out to a much more modest $130K per person. But as has been pointed out repeatedly by others, a) prices would soar temporarily since everyone had so much money, making everyone as poor as they were before the redistribution, and b) the rich would soon recoup their losses while the poor would soon return to being poor. In case you doubt the former phenomenon, check out the apartment and campground prices in North Dakota as the result of the fracking boom. One campground was charging $900 a month for a space to park, no water, no electric! And getting it!

 

No, it is not garbage. You give $300,000 to most people of meager means, and they will piss it away rather quickly, putting themselves right back where they started, and driving down the people who lost money in this transaction.

 

I doubt that anyone would disagree that there is any structural requirement for the poor. I would, however, point out that all models that liberals would agree with include the poor as justification for their policy preferences. There MUST always be poor so that there are sufficient low wage, low education resources for them to take advantage of. The Plantation must have workers. The conversation here is simply demonstrating how "nice" it could be, theoretically, for the surfs. The question becomes, if we remove the ability of capital to be reflexive and responsive, and make it more neutral by dispersing it, what then becomes the likelihood of capital flowing into those areas that most directly generate more wealth? This is and always has been the undoing of the liberal model.

 

The overwhelming majority of rich people in the country did not inherit their wealth. Over 80%. Of those, most worked for years and saved/invested their money. So no, it's not fallacious at all equating wealth with hard work. The left, of which you belong, are simply demagogues against the rich because they subscribe to Marxist economic theories and want people to hate the rich so that their wealth can be forcibly confiscated by the state (for redistribution purposes).

 

First line was edited to say "any structural". I would simply say that for the left, the poor are their leverage. They don't wish to improve their conditions, those conditions are required for their policy prescriptions to derive their real intent which is employment for their social services components. The poor become the population that also perform the menial work liberals are unwilling to attempt, and are necessary to ensure that those who belong to their elite are structurally protected from their future opportunity to improve or otherwise compete.

I would point out that wealth concentration produces fluidity. Either in a consumptive or an investment perspective. The question becomes non assignable wealth, and how it flows into improvements, development, or other socially positive results including innovation and technologies. The less available fluidity, the less socially positive results. Economic parity is historically associated with stagnation. And yet, this is the model that progressives always return to. So, we either retain the plantation, or we stagnate. The left's idea of utopia...

 

It's a far smaller sum than any of this. The M1 money supply is what is liquid and can be readily distributed. That's only about $3.5T. Or about $10 per person!

 

It takes a certain concentration of capital to fund large projects. That is a function our larger banks provide today. If you disperse all the capital then there *will* be projects that simply cannot get the required funding.

Don't confuse money flow and wealth. They are *not* the same. Many car dealers have a large money flow yet have little actual wealth. The bank actually owns much of their inventory, not the dealer!

As someone else pointed out earlier in the thread, much of our wealth is tied up in fixed assets, not in actual money.

 

Economic parity results not just in stagnation but in shared misery! The examples are legion, from the Soviet Union to Venezuela.

The liberal elites want *everyone* to be equally poor, except themselves of course. They think they are Priest-Kings and only they know how we should all live and how we all should think. And they think we should worship them for being so "progressive"!

 

The top 10 of the Forbes 400 *earned* their wealth, they didn't inherit it.

 

Decidedly so. It is their right to privilege that has always been their inconsistency. No man more equal, except for them. This is the truth of the left.

 

One of us is a liar!:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War

 

How do you know if you are producing more value than you consume?

 

If you have to ask....you probably aren't.

 

If we simultaneously divide the national debt equally, that spends the first $60,000.

Now each of those persons needs housing. Average house price is $188,000
So three to a house = $60,000 off.

That's half the money spent.

Everyone need a car? Average car price = $25,000

We've got $60,000 left each so far.

Medical bills are average $3,600 a year.
Food for a year, $2,600

Education? Anyone want an education... $10k a year

Down to $45k now. In the very first year.

Want any government services?
Average tax take is $19,000 a year.

Not much left now.

See if you can spend the last $20-30k yourself.
Remember, once it's gone it's gone.

Want to invest in anything yet perhaps? Some tools or a company. A way of making money? A factory perhaps? A power station?

 

Typically you have money. Are in credit.

 

For a snapshot, you have to add up all the value you produce in a month or a year and then subtract the value of all the government services you use in that same time period. So say you earn $25K a year from your job before taxes. Add in the approximate value of the other costs of employing you to the company in taxes and benefits. (We'll presume you're worth the cost to the company or they'd let you go.) Say that's another $7K a year, making $32K a year in productive worth. Now add up all the ways that you use government services. Each kid in school costs taxpayers ~$8,000 a year, so if you have four kids in school, you're costing taxpayers $32K a year to educate them, so you're at or near zero right there. If your wife collected unemployment benefits or you used the public transportation system (a money losing proposition for every community in America that has one), you consumed more than you produced.

Another way to evaluate your worth in productivity is to take how much money the company you work for earned in profit last year and figure out how much of that profit was attributable to your work. That's a much more subjective question, and could be much higher or much lower than your actual salary. Salesmen typically generate much more profit for the company than they earn in salaries, while janitors generate zero profit and still earn a salary, but it's worth the cost to the company to have clean floors. So how much value does the janitor produce?

For a more balanced approach, you'd have to look at your entire lifespan, how much did you use versus how much did you produce. Most governmental expenditures are actually paid by corporations and the older middle class whose kids have left home, the 46-65 bunch. They are in their peak earning years while consuming far fewer government services. Once they hit 65 and start using Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, their production almost ceases and their use of government services spikes. Interestingly, all value is created by men. Collectively, women over their lifetimes use more government services than they produce in value.