Explain this poverty comparison to me

Lets say I have two 100 gallon aquariums, all equally maintained and fed. call them aquarium A and B
Aquarium A: I have two gay fish
Aquarium B: I have male and female fish

I put both aquariums with automatic feeder, to disperse equal amounts of fish food. and I go to Philippines for a long vacation...

I come back. Aquarium A, both fish are happy. but aquarium B, there's a bunch of fishes in there all chasing each other and not enough food.

QUESTION. Should I put all the poor fishes from aquarium B to aquarium A so they can enjoy the riches of great food and luscious plants that have not been destroyed by all the scavenging?

 

Well.. I laughed!

I can't tell if this is a knock against heterosexuals or actually has anything to do with poverty. This model is also zero-sum, which our economy is not. One person being wealthy and having wealth doesn't prohibit anyone else from doing the same.

So for this analogy to work for poverty, the "food" would be limitless but not always easily obtained.

 

Not always, but often some profit and prosper from the misery of others (by creating misery) one example is war mongering, and housing slumps.

 

YES you should ... then go back to The Philippines.

 

Not what I was saying. I'm saying that one person getting rich, doesn't prevent anyone else from doing so, the fact that this is possible means it's not a zero-sum game.

 

how do you know the fish are gay?

 

Well.. here I was about to tell you that fish doesn't engage in homosexual behavior... and then I found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_displaying_homosexual_behavior

Could be the mouthbreeding fish

 

I just wanna know why you'd go to the Phillipines... is it one of those sex tourism things?

 

I'm not an economist, nor ever pretend to be.
But, engergy and mass can NOT be created or destroyed. Yet wealth, which relies on those things, is infinteless. Why?

Question 2. If the world were to run out of water, how much wealth would there be in the world?

 

Where would the water go?


Wealth doesn't actually rely on energy and mass. That is a really interesting and confusing thing about wealth.

The vast majority of the wealth in the US is in the form of shares of stock. The value of a share of stock isn't dictated by the assets of the company - often the value of stock far exceeds the value of those assets.

The value of a share of stock is the amount that a buyer most recently paid for a share of that stock. The value increases or decreases based on those sales - regardless of any changes to the assets the company holds.

This is just one example of the fact that wealth isn't limited by the amount of mass or energy available.

 

Doesn't matter where it would go. For argument sake, it becomes unconsumable due to contaminants and if drunk, you will die.

 

So as long as more money is created then wealth is infinite?
If money were held constant?

 

To visit family. you find Philipines sexy?

 

The rich would create water out of blood donations

 

Then the man who figures out how to purify it would become wealthy selling clean water. Someone else would figure out a similar process and compete, bringing down prices and improving supply. Eventually the value of the process would become minimal.

 

When I post, I do not think about party lines, political standings, acceptance by certain group, or anything like that. I just post whatever comes to my mind.

 

No, so long as someone can come up with something that someone else wants, wealth in infinite.

 

In the mean time, all the infinite wealth just deflated. As no one cares about your silly stock, because I need to figure out how I can drink this water.

 

So, if wealth is truly of so little value, why is it that the libs are so focused on taking that wealth from the rich and why are they so inflamed about the disparity of wealth between the rich and the poor?

 

I don't know. Because in your scenario, Gov't can just print all the wealth needed and give it all to everyone. Since the gov't controls what constitutes money, they can do that.

 

My, that is an awfully cynical acknowledgement of America's social mobility problems--presenting socioeconomic class as an impassable barrier.

 

What is wealth? The one who has the most digits on a computer screen that they can push back and forth?
Or land that will feed a family, in good and bad weather times.

If I were able to purchase every inch of land and all the mineral rights on every cubic in of earth, I'd have all the wealth and everyone else must crawl to me for anything.
If I chose to give nothing to no one, eventually, I will be the only one left.

 

Question 2. If the world were to run out of water, how much wealth would there be in the world?[/QUOTE]

I'm no economist either, just a guy who took an active interest in the topic. To the question, wealth isn't a tangible object so there's no expectation for it to behave according to the laws of thermodynamics. It's a conceptual idea that within an economy, everyone can become more wealthy simultaneously. Think of it like a pie, we each have a slice, but if the pie itself becomes larger, we're all wealthier as a result.

2. We'd die, seeing as how we require water to survive.

 

No, because the money that government prints isn't wealth, it is a method of measuring wealth.

If government prints more money, the value of an item doesn't change, but the value of the item measured in dollars does. It will take more dollars to buy one share of stock, but it would take more money to buy everything else too. The relative value of stocks to anything else would remain the same.

 

I'm no economist either, just a guy who took an active interest in the topic. To the question, wealth isn't a tangible object so there's no expectation for it to behave according to the laws of thermodynamics. It's a conceptual idea that within an economy, everyone can become more wealthy simultaneously. Think of it like a pie, we each have a slice, but if the pie itself becomes larger, we're all wealthier as a result.

2. We'd die, seeing as how we require water to survive.[/QUOTE]

Which could say, If someone were able to control the supply of water, they'd be wealthy.
How does the pie get bigger? There has to be more money created to make the pie bigger. If the supply of money stays the same or decreases, wealth would stay constant or decrease accordingly.