Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
But from what it sounds like you're saying, someone transferring from one path to another will already have been put at a disadvantage due to them missing out on the accelerated pace of learning in the more academic path compared to the one they were initially put on. So in order to even be slotting in at the same starting point as their peers on the academic path they will have to have been fulfilling the work requirements for their current path and learning the material from the other path which they are not being taught to then pass a test to move from one path to the other.

Of course people who don't have to deal with that and have been groomed from the get go to improve their academic ability are going to outperform people who have had to teach themselves the material for that path on top of learning the material for their own path in order to pass a test to move over to another path.

But you also get your "lowest level" degree, get an apprenticeship + Meister and the do the extra studying to go to university. You don't have to work on getting through this while still in school (you do one after another). You end up needing one extra year but you also are a fully trained craftsman (and Meister), while the ones who went directly through the academic path don't have that (but they save one year, that may be different these days). I think you also get by default higher minimum wages in you craft if you have finished your apprenticeship (and another bump if you are a Meister).

From the link above:

In Germany and Austria, the word Meister also assigns a title and public degree in the field of vocational education. The German Meister title qualifies the holder to study at a University or Fachhochschule, whether the Meister holds the regular entry qualification (Abitur or Fachhochschulreife) or not.[1] In 2012 the commissions of the states and the federal government, also the associated partners, concluded that the "Meisterbrief" is equivalent a bachelor's degree(Deutscher Qualifikationsrahmen für lebenslanges Lernen, Level 6, Niveau 6).[2][3][4][5]

The Master craftsman is the highest professional qualification in crafts and is a state-approved grade. The education includes theoretical and practical training in the craft and also business and legal training, and includes the qualification to be allowed to train apprentices as well. The status of Master craftsman is regulated in the German Gesetz zur Ordnung des Handwerks, HwO (Crafts and Trades Regulation Code).

Apparently it would also be equivalent to a bachelor's degree too.

 gorgon wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
Or flunctuatuins in the housing market and demographic shifts have had a negative impact on construction trades. That might be more of a culprit than some villainous billionaire profiteering somehow from ruthlessly screwing over Canadien tradesmen because reasons.

Well, it's certainly more cinematic to imagine Lex Luthor in a skyscraper penthouse, plotting and scheming.

It's not a matter of the evil man plotting how to screw over the little guy. It's that the wealthy as a whole tend to be very driven to collect even more wealth, and a side effect of that is screwing over the little guy. It is simple math that if the wealth is in the hands of the few, the many have less. And again, half the world's wealth = 26 people.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
Or flunctuatuins in the housing market and demographic shifts have had a negative impact on construction trades. That might be more of a culprit than some villainous billionaire profiteering somehow from ruthlessly screwing over Canadien tradesmen because reasons.

Well, it's certainly more cinematic to imagine Lex Luthor in a skyscraper penthouse, plotting and scheming.

It's not a matter of the evil man plotting how to screw over the little guy. It's that the wealthy as a whole tend to be very driven to collect even more wealth, and a side effect of that is screwing over the little guy. It is simple math that if the wealth is in the hands of the few, the many have less. And again, half the world's wealth = 26 people.

I think it's more that the wealthy find it easier to make more money (since they have the capital to invest in assets, rather than paying all their income on survival), and see no need to artifically do worse for themselves just to be nice to other people. Like monopoly, where once you own half the board you can't avoid making money at everyone elses expense.

I'm sure. However, the data tends to suggest that streaming kids into different schools based on performance at an arbitrary age becomes self-fulfilling prophecy: it has incredible impacts on aspirations, self-confidence, social, teacher, and parental support, opportunities etc.

We do have a unified school as well, but their alumni are much more likely to fail; the idea is that more people get the Abitur the better, so we went from 1 in 4 to more than half of the students in about 20 years. So they're taught in a way that most people attending that type of school get it. I read once that an IQ of around 115 is the minimum cognitive requirement to be successful in college (in a field other than humanities) in Germany. So no matter how many people you throw the Abitur at, not only will most of the people not be smart enough to pass in the first place, many of them will actually enter a path that they will fail at and that costs them years of their life in which they should have done something more useful for themselves. Like learning a trade. I know absolutely no poor Meisters, but tons of people with a degree in German or English studies.

 gorgon wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
Or flunctuatuins in the housing market and demographic shifts have had a negative impact on construction trades. That might be more of a culprit than some villainous billionaire profiteering somehow from ruthlessly screwing over Canadien tradesmen because reasons.

Well, it's certainly more cinematic to imagine Lex Luthor in a skyscraper penthouse, plotting and scheming.

It's also, you know, more accurate. If almost all the growth since basically the 80's has gone to the wealthiest, which it has(and an even greater proportion since the financial crisis); if the vast majority of working folk have seen wages, social security, and prospects generally stagnate, which they have; and if we're now in a situation where young people are less likely to move up from the socioeconomic bracket their parents occupy than they were at any time since WW2, which they are, then dismissing criticism of the role the wealthy have played in the economy over the last ~40 years begins to look a lot like burying your head in the sand.

None of those outcomes were inevitable, and none have arrived by accident, the people who had money used it to position themselves to make more, not by interacting with the real economy in a reasonable and fair way and reaping the rewards, but by wielding their power and influence to stack the deck in their favour to a ludicrous degree; deregulation, tax loopholes, tax havens, lobbying, "think tanks" intended to steer the narratives surrounding scientific and economic issues - I mean, at what point do you stop letting them get away with just throwing up their hands and saying "Who, me?"

Not to get too far into politics, but that would not have happened if voters did not let it happen. It is easy to lump the blame all elsewhere when reality (as always) is more nuanced. Bringing it back to the topic at hand, the voters of previous generations have allowed and/or encouraged the younger ones getting screwed. What really provokes outrage is when they then blame younger generations for being screwed by circumstances they had a hand in creating.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Herzlos wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
Or flunctuatuins in the housing market and demographic shifts have had a negative impact on construction trades. That might be more of a culprit than some villainous billionaire profiteering somehow from ruthlessly screwing over Canadien tradesmen because reasons.

Well, it's certainly more cinematic to imagine Lex Luthor in a skyscraper penthouse, plotting and scheming.

It's not a matter of the evil man plotting how to screw over the little guy. It's that the wealthy as a whole tend to be very driven to collect even more wealth, and a side effect of that is screwing over the little guy. It is simple math that if the wealth is in the hands of the few, the many have less. And again, half the world's wealth = 26 people.

I think it's more that the wealthy find it easier to make more money (since they have the capital to invest in assets, rather than paying all their income on survival), and see no need to artifically do worse for themselves just to be nice to other people. Like monopoly, where once you own half the board you can't avoid making money at everyone elses expense.

You do have a good point here, I agree that is a factor.

Good points being brought up here. I want to highlight something that Yodhrin said in particular, about how the currently uber-wealthy got to their position through financial shenanigans rather than through interacting with the real economy. Go ahead and search for the size of the entire economy including government revenue and expenditure compared to the size of the derivatives market. It will blow your mind.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Not to get too far into politics, but that would not have happened if voters did not let it happen. It is easy to lump the blame all elsewhere when reality (as always) is more nuanced. Bringing it back to the topic at hand, the voters of previous generations have allowed and/or encouraged the younger ones getting screwed. What really provokes outrage is when they then blame younger generations for being screwed by circumstances they had a hand in creating.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Herzlos wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
Or flunctuatuins in the housing market and demographic shifts have had a negative impact on construction trades. That might be more of a culprit than some villainous billionaire profiteering somehow from ruthlessly screwing over Canadien tradesmen because reasons.

Well, it's certainly more cinematic to imagine Lex Luthor in a skyscraper penthouse, plotting and scheming.

It's not a matter of the evil man plotting how to screw over the little guy. It's that the wealthy as a whole tend to be very driven to collect even more wealth, and a side effect of that is screwing over the little guy. It is simple math that if the wealth is in the hands of the few, the many have less. And again, half the world's wealth = 26 people.

I think it's more that the wealthy find it easier to make more money (since they have the capital to invest in assets, rather than paying all their income on survival), and see no need to artifically do worse for themselves just to be nice to other people. Like monopoly, where once you own half the board you can't avoid making money at everyone elses expense.

You do have a good point here, I agree that is a factor.

We're not at maximum wealth, we're not divvying up a finite pie. The 26 people who possess half the world's wealth are not stopping you from getting a raise or making gains on investments or getting a higher paying job, they are not preventing you from becoming wealthier. There's no cap on how much wealth we can generate.

Indeed, the vast majority of the wealth of rich people is in assets. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick make tens of millions of dollars a year in salary and endorsements but Robert Kraft owns the New England Patriots and the team is worth $3.7 Billion dollars. That's the primary reason Kraft is worth $5.2 billion, because he bought the Patriots for $175 million in 1994 and now they're worth $3.7 billion. Kraft doesn't have $3.7 billion in cash sitting in a Scrooge McDuck money bin vault, he didn't take $3.7 billion from other people, it was all generated by asset appreciation. The only way for Kraft to actually get $3.7 billion out of the Patriots would be to sell the team and then he wouldn't own the asset anymore so he'd need to invest that $3.7 billion in something else because if he just parked it in bank it would barely grow over time as inflation offset his interest gains. Kraft doesn't actually have $3.7 billion, he owns an asset that he could theoretically sell for $3.7 billion which is to say that his wealth is mostly intangible.

The internet ushered in the digital age which has been a wonderful advancement in many ways but has also rolled back the clock in a lot of detrimental ways in terms of economics and monopolistic businesses. After his recent divorce Jeff Bezos is now "only" worth $80 billion. Again, the vast majority of that wealth isn't liquid. Bezos owns a majority of shares in Amazon and it's subsidiaries so on paper he is incredibly wealthy but virtually all of that wealth has only and will only exist ethereally and never be converted into money that gets spent or invested. It is not bad that somebody can start their own company, be the majority shareholder of their company and run their company successfully so that it grows over time and increases in value. That doesn't inhibit you or me or anyone else from achieving financial success. What becomes a problem is when government regulation allows corporations to grow unchecked to the point where they dominate markets, destroy or assimilate competition and become de facto monopolies. It's not that 26 people have all the money, it's that they own all the assets. The monolith corporation of Disney ABC ESPN Marvel Lucasfilm is not a good thing, it has a terrible effect on opportunities in the marketplaces. That's how massive wealth disparities have been created, companies become hugely successful so the owners use that success to buy more companies and suddenly there's only a handful of companies in a given market/sector and suddenly a handful of people now own an enormous percentage of the wealth thanks to asset appreciation, being majority shareholders, stock options etc. We've created a modern version of the latifundia system where something that isn't inherently wrong or bad, the private ownership of land/businesses is allowed to grow to extremes to the extent that a handful of gigantic plantations/businesses overwhelm smaller farms/businesses dominate the market and oppress labor.

Prestor Jon wrote:


We're not at maximum wealth, we're not divvying up a finite pie. The 26 people who possess half the world's wealth are not stopping you from getting a raise or making gains on investments or getting a higher paying job, they are not preventing you from becoming wealthier. There's no cap on how much wealth we can generate.

Your first point is true. . .we aren't at maximum wealth. . . but to say that the 26 people who possess half the world's wealth are not stopping raises and all that other stuff, well, that's simply not true, because they are by and large the CEOs and policy drivers for their business (and indeed some countries based on political donations and activity).

All I really need to do is to point you toward the gilded age. The era of the "robber baron". . . the JP Morgans, Rockefellers, Carnegies and the like all conducted their business in political halls as well as wall street. . . They convinced politicians of certain policies that greatly aided them, to the detriment of the rest of society. At some point, people woke up to that fact, created new powerful legislation which led to a period of great economic prosperity and economic mobility. Sadly, the people who lead that legislation all died off and retired, and those who've only known the good times, forgot and lost sight of what created those good times, and began listening to the whispers of the newer, more modern Morgans and Rockefellers, and began the gakky legislation cycle all over again, and thus we're back here, in a situation where people haven't seen economic progress in 2 decades.

Kids today just need to embrace the joy of not accepting the first offer, the "take it or leave it", the take a look at your hard earned money and your hard spent money.

I find that advertising works better than it ever has because it has more face-time.
Every communication we do or looking up something has advertising attributed to it.
They engage psychiatrists to help with advertising and pay as you go games to in my view unfairly play every underhanded tactic to get that money out of the kids.

What I love is all the choices being "non-choices" where there really are only 1 or two true products sold and the rest is to get you to choose the "correct" product (apple does this all the time or your cable/internet provider).

How often do you look at your bank account and see how much they charge as a flat fee for "free transactions" vs a the much hated limited amount (20 or so in a month with a huge fee if going over... use the credit card? Pay off balance every darn time).

Unlimited internet vs the X-gigabytes, same goes for the phone data usage.

The TV "bundle" of your internet and the select variety of channels (unbundle and get much cheaper by the little guys).

Paying the full insurance in one shot or the monthly rate with a nominal interest.

5 year term (higher interest but constant) vs 6 month variable rate (lower rate but payments vary) for mortgage? Nevermind the huge loss just renting.

"Payday" loans or anything like that for that "I need the money now and cannot wait a day." and pay through the nose.

Microtransactions in apps... my favorite, my kids wonder why they are not given any purchasing rights on the "family" account.
Play freaking harder and earn those gems... nevermind it WILL take forever to get many... learn to "pay to win!" and be a poor consumer.

Freaking disposable razor blades being some $5 each when a safety razor costs cents for the blade.
Nevermind the shaving cream, get the dry "puck" and a brush and it seems better than the disposable spray cans.
Companies love to supply stuff that is a daily need.

Funny in the day of "green" and more stuff goes into trash/supposed recycling than ever before: everything is designed to be disposed of, NOT REPAIRED.
When was the last time you had a piece of equipment fixed other than your furnace or car? Maybe a phone screen? Maybe?

It is preferred that people "spend now" and pay nice easy payments on interest and "services" forever.
Death by a thousand cuts.

I made a freaking spreadsheet to import all my bank info into so I could categorize and sum all the damn stuff my money goes into.
Many companies make "mistakes" and you have to nail them hard to show you are looking.
Changed insurance recently for less deductibles and lower premiums and my old insurance wondered why I was not a loyal customer... because I have a disloyal service provider.

Complain.
Change "services"
Monitor where the money goes.
Spend the time to make that health insurance claim.
Claim everything you can on your taxes.
Take a quick look and find those sales, be patient if you do not need that item right now.
Get gas on the Thursday.
Buy groceries on the weekend.

I have been TERRIBLY LAZY and all these groups count on that.
I have saved about 10% of my disposable income by just making these small changes without really denying myself (other than a bit of up-front time spent juggling things).

Holy wall of text... sorry!!!!

Prestor Jon wrote:


We're not at maximum wealth, we're not divvying up a finite pie. The 26 people who possess half the world's wealth are not stopping you from getting a raise or making gains on investments or getting a higher paying job, they are not preventing you from becoming wealthier. There's no cap on how much wealth we can generate.

Indeed, the vast majority of the wealth of rich people is in assets.

I agree with your overall premise that one person possessing wealth does not preclude another from making their own. However, the vast majority of wealth is definitely not in assets. Just for an idea of scale, all of the currency in circulation in the world has an estimated value of $90.4 trillion, which includes around 8% physical currency and 92% "ones and zeroes" in banking accounts. All developed real estate in the world carries an estimated value of $217 trillion.

The world derivatives market is estimated to value around $544 trillion on the absolute low end. Some estimates hold derivatives over one quadrillion dollars. This is, in effect, totally fictional value that has extremely little relation to actual assets or the "real" economy. It's a way for banks to create trillions of dollars out of thin air and trade them around with each other without actually buying or selling any assets at all, but rather speculative bets and guesses about how markets or assets might preform, and even turn liabilities and debts into assets. Imagine if everyone in your neighborhood was able to take a second mortgage out on your home based on the value of your future payments toward your single, original mortgage. The cause of the 2008 financial collapse was that banks were holding onto billions or trillions in these credit default swaps and securities that were actually liabilities as opposed to having any kind of value in themselves, and as a result they reached a critical mass of liability and debt that turned into a financial singularity, which still exists to this day.

On a somewhat related note, global debt is estimated to total $215 trillion, which is 325% of the global GDP.

So while I definitely believe that it is true that one person who creates value in real markets and economies does not steal it from another, the theft happens when something of no real value is created. All of these financial markets are hoovering up value from the "real" economy and allowing for the mass consolidation of real assets into fewer and fewer hands, all while destroying the spending and saving power of the average person.

NinthMusketeer has a point in that people should have done something about this Ponzi scheme of a fictional economy, especially after the 2008 financial collapse showed its dangers. However, I think it's a mistake to say that they could have exercised their voting power in order to fix it, because it's simply not an issue that has been on the table. One administration will spend trillions in taxpayers' money to bail out financial institutions which are pretty much terminally insolvent due to egregious greed and mismanagement, and the next administration will put the very bank executives who perpetrated the crises in charge of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. So should the people have done something? Absolutely, but that something does not involve voting for a mainstream political candidate of any stripe. The proof is in the pudding; to this day things like predatory loans to under-served customers who represent a significant credit risk is something which banks must do according to things like federal CRA regulations, and nothing is stopping them from turning those bad loans into credit default swaps and securities, which is exactly what precipitated the 2008 collapse. And that is only a fraction of the derivatives market. And these transactions happen largely not on a market exchange but in private trades between companies which are not even required to be reported to a government agency. The end result of these transactions is to produce massive amounts of liquidity, which allows the banks to make even more loans to anyone and everyone, which allows them to write those debts in their books as assets in the form of securities, which in turn produces liquidity...

Some things just don't make a lot of sense in this world until you connect a couple of dots. The native populations of industrialized countries are dwindling because their birth rates are below that which is necessary for the current population to replace itself. This would cause problems in many ways, but it would also cause a massive contraction in housing prices, result in higher wages and even help the environment through fewer greenhouse gas emissions. So why is the housing market increasing in value to above 2006/2007 levels? Why, If wages and the environment are important, are we artificially inflating our population through immigration? Why is student loan debt being packaged into securities and derivatives and sold to investors, and when will THAT crash the economy?

Short answer: greed.
Long answer: stupid, shortsighted greed combined with a societal structure that rewards shouting loudly and early over actually understanding things and thinking before you speak.

Bran Dawri wrote:
Short answer: greed.
Long answer: stupid, shortsighted greed combined with a societal structure that rewards shouting loudly and early over actually understanding things and thinking before you speak.

Yeah.

Prestor Jon wrote:
We're not at maximum wealth, we're not divvying up a finite pie. The 26 people who possess half the world's wealth are not stopping you from getting a raise or making gains on investments or getting a higher paying job, they are not preventing you from becoming wealthier.

The product I'm working on right now is being run into the ground trying to out compete a venture capital funded competitor of half the actual quality.

Yes they are.

 Talizvar wrote:
Kids today just need to embrace the joy of not accepting the first offer, the "take it or leave it", the take a look at your hard earned money and your hard spent money.

I find that advertising works better than it ever has because it has more face-time.
Every communication we do or looking up something has advertising attributed to it.
They engage psychiatrists to help with advertising and pay as you go games to in my view unfairly play every underhanded tactic to get that money out of the kids.

What I love is all the choices being "non-choices" where there really are only 1 or two true products sold and the rest is to get you to choose the "correct" product (apple does this all the time or your cable/internet provider).

How often do you look at your bank account and see how much they charge as a flat fee for "free transactions" vs a the much hated limited amount (20 or so in a month with a huge fee if going over... use the credit card? Pay off balance every darn time).

Unlimited internet vs the X-gigabytes, same goes for the phone data usage.

The TV "bundle" of your internet and the select variety of channels (unbundle and get much cheaper by the little guys).

Paying the full insurance in one shot or the monthly rate with a nominal interest.

5 year term (higher interest but constant) vs 6 month variable rate (lower rate but payments vary) for mortgage? Nevermind the huge loss just renting.

"Payday" loans or anything like that for that "I need the money now and cannot wait a day." and pay through the nose.

Microtransactions in apps... my favorite, my kids wonder why they are not given any purchasing rights on the "family" account.
Play freaking harder and earn those gems... nevermind it WILL take forever to get many... learn to "pay to win!" and be a poor consumer.

Freaking disposable razor blades being some $5 each when a safety razor costs cents for the blade.
Nevermind the shaving cream, get the dry "puck" and a brush and it seems better than the disposable spray cans.
Companies love to supply stuff that is a daily need.

Funny in the day of "green" and more stuff goes into trash/supposed recycling than ever before: everything is designed to be disposed of, NOT REPAIRED.
When was the last time you had a piece of equipment fixed other than your furnace or car? Maybe a phone screen? Maybe?

It is preferred that people "spend now" and pay nice easy payments on interest and "services" forever.
Death by a thousand cuts.

I made a freaking spreadsheet to import all my bank info into so I could categorize and sum all the damn stuff my money goes into.
Many companies make "mistakes" and you have to nail them hard to show you are looking.
Changed insurance recently for less deductibles and lower premiums and my old insurance wondered why I was not a loyal customer... because I have a disloyal service provider.

Complain.
Change "services"
Monitor where the money goes.
Spend the time to make that health insurance claim.
Claim everything you can on your taxes.
Take a quick look and find those sales, be patient if you do not need that item right now.
Get gas on the Thursday.
Buy groceries on the weekend.

I have been TERRIBLY LAZY and all these groups count on that.
I have saved about 10% of my disposable income by just making these small changes without really denying myself (other than a bit of up-front time spent juggling things).

Holy wall of text... sorry!!!!

This. People are being charged out the ar*e, and being told that its for 'convenience.' It appeals to the laziness of the modern generation. We expect things instantly and without effort, and we pay for that.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
Kids today just need to embrace the joy of not accepting the first offer, the "take it or leave it", the take a look at your hard earned money and your hard spent money.

I find that advertising works better than it ever has because it has more face-time.
Every communication we do or looking up something has advertising attributed to it.
They engage psychiatrists to help with advertising and pay as you go games to in my view unfairly play every underhanded tactic to get that money out of the kids.

What I love is all the choices being "non-choices" where there really are only 1 or two true products sold and the rest is to get you to choose the "correct" product (apple does this all the time or your cable/internet provider).

How often do you look at your bank account and see how much they charge as a flat fee for "free transactions" vs a the much hated limited amount (20 or so in a month with a huge fee if going over... use the credit card? Pay off balance every darn time).

Unlimited internet vs the X-gigabytes, same goes for the phone data usage.

The TV "bundle" of your internet and the select variety of channels (unbundle and get much cheaper by the little guys).

Paying the full insurance in one shot or the monthly rate with a nominal interest.

5 year term (higher interest but constant) vs 6 month variable rate (lower rate but payments vary) for mortgage? Nevermind the huge loss just renting.

"Payday" loans or anything like that for that "I need the money now and cannot wait a day." and pay through the nose.

Microtransactions in apps... my favorite, my kids wonder why they are not given any purchasing rights on the "family" account.
Play freaking harder and earn those gems... nevermind it WILL take forever to get many... learn to "pay to win!" and be a poor consumer.

Freaking disposable razor blades being some $5 each when a safety razor costs cents for the blade.
Nevermind the shaving cream, get the dry "puck" and a brush and it seems better than the disposable spray cans.
Companies love to supply stuff that is a daily need.

Funny in the day of "green" and more stuff goes into trash/supposed recycling than ever before: everything is designed to be disposed of, NOT REPAIRED.
When was the last time you had a piece of equipment fixed other than your furnace or car? Maybe a phone screen? Maybe?

It is preferred that people "spend now" and pay nice easy payments on interest and "services" forever.
Death by a thousand cuts.

I made a freaking spreadsheet to import all my bank info into so I could categorize and sum all the damn stuff my money goes into.
Many companies make "mistakes" and you have to nail them hard to show you are looking.
Changed insurance recently for less deductibles and lower premiums and my old insurance wondered why I was not a loyal customer... because I have a disloyal service provider.

Complain.
Change "services"
Monitor where the money goes.
Spend the time to make that health insurance claim.
Claim everything you can on your taxes.
Take a quick look and find those sales, be patient if you do not need that item right now.
Get gas on the Thursday.
Buy groceries on the weekend.

I have been TERRIBLY LAZY and all these groups count on that.
I have saved about 10% of my disposable income by just making these small changes without really denying myself (other than a bit of up-front time spent juggling things).

Holy wall of text... sorry!!!!

This. People are being charged out the ar*e, and being told that its for 'convenience.' It appeals to the laziness of the modern generation. We expect things instantly and without effort, and we pay for that.

I’m sure all that stuff matters to some people, but here it really makes feth all difference because it’s the big things like a house, rent and bills that swallow all your money. I don’t even pay for home internet or TV because I can get by off my phone plan’s data hotspotted to my computer, it’s the water, electricity, gas, rent, etc that kills you. The reason I buy a coffee every day instead of saving myself a few bucks isn’t because I lack the brain power to add up what it costs me over the course of year or decade, it’s because I already have and found it to be such a drop in the bucket that it’s not worth giving up because it doesn’t get me meaningfully closer to the important things like owning a house. In a lot of ways I wish I hadn’t wasted my time getting educated because in that time the housing market extended out of my reach. When my dad or he’ll even my older siblings hit the job market some careful maths and saving was all it took to get a down payment on a house and have it paid off in a few years, now you need an income well above the median wage to make it happen and it doesn’t matter if you save a few bucks here and there if you aren’t getting a large cash flow to begin with.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Not to get too far into politics, but that would not have happened if voters did not let it happen. It is easy to lump the blame all elsewhere when reality (as always) is more nuanced. Bringing it back to the topic at hand, the voters of previous generations have allowed and/or encouraged the younger ones getting screwed. What really provokes outrage is when they then blame younger generations for being screwed by circumstances they had a hand in creating.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Herzlos wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
Or flunctuatuins in the housing market and demographic shifts have had a negative impact on construction trades. That might be more of a culprit than some villainous billionaire profiteering somehow from ruthlessly screwing over Canadien tradesmen because reasons.

Well, it's certainly more cinematic to imagine Lex Luthor in a skyscraper penthouse, plotting and scheming.

It's not a matter of the evil man plotting how to screw over the little guy. It's that the wealthy as a whole tend to be very driven to collect even more wealth, and a side effect of that is screwing over the little guy. It is simple math that if the wealth is in the hands of the few, the many have less. And again, half the world's wealth = 26 people.

I think it's more that the wealthy find it easier to make more money (since they have the capital to invest in assets, rather than paying all their income on survival), and see no need to artifically do worse for themselves just to be nice to other people. Like monopoly, where once you own half the board you can't avoid making money at everyone elses expense.

You do have a good point here, I agree that is a factor.

We're not at maximum wealth, we're not divvying up a finite pie. The 26 people who possess half the world's wealth are not stopping you from getting a raise or making gains on investments or getting a higher paying job, they are not preventing you from becoming wealthier. There's no cap on how much wealth we can generate.

But those 26 people have an absolutely immensely disproportionate amount of influence, and influence is a finite resource. There's about a quadrillizillion tonnes of research papers that outline how a disproportionate wealth concentration is actively harmful to democratic societies. Relative wealth matters.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:


We're not at maximum wealth, we're not divvying up a finite pie. The 26 people who possess half the world's wealth are not stopping you from getting a raise or making gains on investments or getting a higher paying job, they are not preventing you from becoming wealthier. There's no cap on how much wealth we can generate.

Your first point is true. . .we aren't at maximum wealth. . . but to say that the 26 people who possess half the world's wealth are not stopping raises and all that other stuff, well, that's simply not true, because they are by and large the CEOs and policy drivers for their business (and indeed some countries based on political donations and activity).

All I really need to do is to point you toward the gilded age. The era of the "robber baron". . . the JP Morgans, Rockefellers, Carnegies and the like all conducted their business in political halls as well as wall street. . . They convinced politicians of certain policies that greatly aided them, to the detriment of the rest of society. At some point, people woke up to that fact, created new powerful legislation which led to a period of great economic prosperity and economic mobility. Sadly, the people who lead that legislation all died off and retired, and those who've only known the good times, forgot and lost sight of what created those good times, and began listening to the whispers of the newer, more modern Morgans and Rockefellers, and began the gakky legislation cycle all over again, and thus we're back here, in a situation where people haven't seen economic progress in 2 decades.

I'll concede that CEOs/owners can dictate labor policies within their companies. You can absolutely blame Jeff Bezos for poor pay and work conditions for Amazon warehouse staff but you can't blame Jeff Bezos that you are working in an Amazon warehouse instead of a different job you want. I agree with your robber baron analogy, only now it's worse because it's not tied up with individuals or families, it's more corporate consolidations and mergers in industries, Disney is too big of a corporation, Wells Fargo is too big of a corporation, it doesn't matter who their CEO is or how much they pay their executives, those are just by products of their size. Break up the corporations and everything else comes back more into line. The status quo is where the money is which is what makes established interests so influential in politics because they're protecting the status quo and that's keeping the money flowing into the political system.

 Luciferian wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:


We're not at maximum wealth, we're not divvying up a finite pie. The 26 people who possess half the world's wealth are not stopping you from getting a raise or making gains on investments or getting a higher paying job, they are not preventing you from becoming wealthier. There's no cap on how much wealth we can generate.

Indeed, the vast majority of the wealth of rich people is in assets.

I agree with your overall premise that one person possessing wealth does not preclude another from making their own. However, the vast majority of wealth is definitely not in assets. Just for an idea of scale, all of the currency in circulation in the world has an estimated value of $90.4 trillion, which includes around 8% physical currency and 92% "ones and zeroes" in banking accounts. All developed real estate in the world carries an estimated value of $217 trillion.

The world derivatives market is estimated to value around $544 trillion on the absolute low end. Some estimates hold derivatives over one quadrillion dollars. This is, in effect, totally fictional value that has extremely little relation to actual assets or the "real" economy. It's a way for banks to create trillions of dollars out of thin air and trade them around with each other without actually buying or selling any assets at all, but rather speculative bets and guesses about how markets or assets might preform, and even turn liabilities and debts into assets. Imagine if everyone in your neighborhood was able to take a second mortgage out on your home based on the value of your future payments toward your single, original mortgage. The cause of the 2008 financial collapse was that banks were holding onto billions or trillions in these credit default swaps and securities that were actually liabilities as opposed to having any kind of value in themselves, and as a result they reached a critical mass of liability and debt that turned into a financial singularity, which still exists to this day.

On a somewhat related note, global debt is estimated to total $215 trillion, which is 325% of the global GDP.

So while I definitely believe that it is true that one person who creates value in real markets and economies does not steal it from another, the theft happens when something of no real value is created. All of these financial markets are hoovering up value from the "real" economy and allowing for the mass consolidation of real assets into fewer and fewer hands, all while destroying the spending and saving power of the average person.

NinthMusketeer has a point in that people should have done something about this Ponzi scheme of a fictional economy, especially after the 2008 financial collapse showed its dangers. However, I think it's a mistake to say that they could have exercised their voting power in order to fix it, because it's simply not an issue that has been on the table. One administration will spend trillions in taxpayers' money to bail out financial institutions which are pretty much terminally insolvent due to egregious greed and mismanagement, and the next administration will put the very bank executives who perpetrated the crises in charge of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. So should the people have done something? Absolutely, but that something does not involve voting for a mainstream political candidate of any stripe. The proof is in the pudding; to this day things like predatory loans to under-served customers who represent a significant credit risk is something which banks must do according to things like federal CRA regulations, and nothing is stopping them from turning those bad loans into credit default swaps and securities, which is exactly what precipitated the 2008 collapse. And that is only a fraction of the derivatives market. And these transactions happen largely not on a market exchange but in private trades between companies which are not even required to be reported to a government agency. The end result of these transactions is to produce massive amounts of liquidity, which allows the banks to make even more loans to anyone and everyone, which allows them to write those debts in their books as assets in the form of securities, which in turn produces liquidity...

Some things just don't make a lot of sense in this world until you connect a couple of dots. The native populations of industrialized countries are dwindling because their birth rates are below that which is necessary for the current population to replace itself. This would cause problems in many ways, but it would also cause a massive contraction in housing prices, result in higher wages and even help the environment through fewer greenhouse gas emissions. So why is the housing market increasing in value to above 2006/2007 levels? Why, If wages and the environment are important, are we artificially inflating our population through immigration? Why is student loan debt being packaged into securities and derivatives and sold to investors, and when will THAT crash the economy?

I wasn't trying to be narrow with the term asset. Assets can be current, fixed, financial investments or intangible assets, my house and my 401(k) are both assets. Every consumption based economy is a house of cards, you can't have increased consumption forever. Why did GW increase the prices on the Start Collecting kits? Because they can't guarantee increased sales but they need to meet or exceed their earnings projections to continue paying dividends and be a desirable stock so that their share price doesn't drop. Increasing the price of your most discounted products helps your bottom line without interfering with your pricing structure for new products and helps you hit profit goals with a smaller increase in sales volume.
Big Banks need to do the same thing and mortgage backed securities and derivatives just gave them a new market that was new enough to have vague or nonexistent regulations making it easily exploitable for profitable gains. The financial sector benefits which in turn helps the economy and everyone is happy because established interests are making money and we decided a long time ago to wholeheartedly embrace the boom and bust cycle so everyone is always eager to pile on to the latest boom and ride it as far as it can go until it busts.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

YeOldSaltPotato wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
We're not at maximum wealth, we're not divvying up a finite pie. The 26 people who possess half the world's wealth are not stopping you from getting a raise or making gains on investments or getting a higher paying job, they are not preventing you from becoming wealthier.

The product I'm working on right now is being run into the ground trying to out compete a venture capital funded competitor of half the actual quality.

Yes they are.

That's difficulty in trying to out compete rivals with more money/resources. I can name several local micro breweries that make much better beer than Budweiser but they'll never be able to outcompete Anheuser-Busch. That's always been the case. Simply having a superior product has never been a guarantee of financial success. We absolutely need to a do a better job of breaking up giant corporations and protecting opportunity in the marketplace via a regulatory overhaul but even under ideal market conditions quality products can still fail to achieve commercial success.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Not to get too far into politics, but that would not have happened if voters did not let it happen. It is easy to lump the blame all elsewhere when reality (as always) is more nuanced. Bringing it back to the topic at hand, the voters of previous generations have allowed and/or encouraged the younger ones getting screwed. What really provokes outrage is when they then blame younger generations for being screwed by circumstances they had a hand in creating.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Herzlos wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
Or flunctuatuins in the housing market and demographic shifts have had a negative impact on construction trades. That might be more of a culprit than some villainous billionaire profiteering somehow from ruthlessly screwing over Canadien tradesmen because reasons.

Well, it's certainly more cinematic to imagine Lex Luthor in a skyscraper penthouse, plotting and scheming.

It's not a matter of the evil man plotting how to screw over the little guy. It's that the wealthy as a whole tend to be very driven to collect even more wealth, and a side effect of that is screwing over the little guy. It is simple math that if the wealth is in the hands of the few, the many have less. And again, half the world's wealth = 26 people.

I think it's more that the wealthy find it easier to make more money (since they have the capital to invest in assets, rather than paying all their income on survival), and see no need to artifically do worse for themselves just to be nice to other people. Like monopoly, where once you own half the board you can't avoid making money at everyone elses expense.

You do have a good point here, I agree that is a factor.

We're not at maximum wealth, we're not divvying up a finite pie. The 26 people who possess half the world's wealth are not stopping you from getting a raise or making gains on investments or getting a higher paying job, they are not preventing you from becoming wealthier. There's no cap on how much wealth we can generate.

But those 26 people have an absolutely immensely disproportionate amount of influence, and influence is a finite resource. There's about a quadrillizillion tonnes of research papers that outline how a disproportionate wealth concentration is actively harmful to democratic societies. Relative wealth matters.

I've never said that massively disproportionate wealth concentration is good, I'm pointing out that the amount of wealth that you can acquire is not limited due to the wealth already acquired by others. The economic effects of wealth concentration are known but that doesn't change that believing that you can't acquire the education or skills that you want to land the job or salary that you want because Bill Gates has all the money is just scapegoating.

Well doing those things cost money. If you don't have money you need to get it from people who do. So when a few people are hoarding wealth and not spreading it yeah, they are preventing that. Saying the pie can grow means nothing because that growth is not evenly distributed to all areas. Put simply the rich have their slice growing while for the rest of us it is remaining static at best. On average it is shrinking because expenses have grown faster than wages.

Or put differently, name one instance when increased centralization of wealth has not led to a decline in quality of life for the majority. When that is and has always been the direct cause-and-effect it is silly to suggest it could be anything else without compelling evidence.

Not that it is a matter of the masses being blameless victims in all this. Objection to the trend has been plentiful but actions speak louder than words; actions have been dominated by apathy and what amounts to 'yes daddy hit me harder!'

Prestor Jon wrote:


I've never said that massively disproportionate wealth concentration is good, I'm pointing out that the amount of wealth that you can acquire is not limited due to the wealth already acquired by others. The economic effects of wealth concentration are known but that doesn't change that believing that you can't acquire the education or skills that you want to land the job or salary that you want because Bill Gates has all the money is just scapegoating.

Your opportunities to acquire more wealth are limited because the ability of the ultra-wealthy to defend their interests is far greater than your ability to defend yours.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Well doing those things cost money. If you don't have money you need to get it from people who do. So when a few people are hoarding wealth and not spreading it yeah, they are preventing that. Saying the pie can grow means nothing because that growth is not evenly distributed to all areas. Put simply the rich have their slice growing while for the rest of us it is remaining static at best. On average it is shrinking because expenses have grown faster than wages.

Or put differently, name one instance when increased centralization of wealth has not led to a decline in quality of life for the majority. When that is and has always been the direct cause-and-effect it is silly to suggest it could be anything else without compelling evidence.

Not that it is a matter of the masses being blameless victims in all this. Objection to the trend has been plentiful but actions speak louder than words; actions have been dominated by apathy and what amounts to 'yes daddy hit me harder!'

No you don't have to take money from other people in order to get more. You can generate more money/wealth for yourself without having to subtract money/wealth from others. If you get a raise at work none of your coworkers have to suffer offsetting pay cuts, if you home appreciates in value nobody else's home has to depreciate in value, if your 401(k)/stock portfolio has a good year in the market nobody else has to suffer an offsetting bad year in the market, if you want to acquire more education or skills nobody else has to have less education or skills.

It's like baking cookies. I can bake cookies and you can bake cookies and Lebron James can bake cookies and the Staples delivery guy who was at our office this morning can bake cookies, an accountant in Seattle can bake cookies, a restaurant owner in Tulsa can bake cookies, a teacher in Newark can bake cookies. We can all bake cookies and have more cookies without having to take cookies out of other peoples' cookie jars. People like Lebron can bake more cookies than you or me, even hire pastry chefs to bake even more cookies for him and it still doesn't limit your or my ability to bake more cookies. Chips Ahoy and Nestle Tollhouse can make enough cookies to feed the world and you and I can still bake all the cookies we want.

You and I are in agreement that extreme wealth disparity is bad for the economy and the political system. In general wealth disparities along a normal spectrum wouldn't be a problem, taken to extremes with a fraction of one percent amassing an insanely large portion of the wealth concentrates not just wealth but power. The problem isn't that somebody like Jeff Bezos can bake more cookies than us, the problem is that Bezos can push legislation that limits the amount of chocolate chips we can buy because they're not a healthy food choice or buys up wheat futures and flour producing companies and drives up the price in the stores so we can't afford to make the cookies we want, etc.We've let the system become massively distorted and the mechanism that we should be using to bring back in line, government regulation, is massively distorted itself by the same problem coupled with our inability to actually elect people who won't actively work to make sure the situation continues and gets worse.

The fact that Daniel Snyder recently bought a super yacht for $100 million does not prevent people from going to college or buying groceries or paying rent. There's also absolutely no reason for a municipality to take on a massive debt burden that will be passed on to its residents/constituents in order to pay for a new sports stadium for a billionaire like Snyder. It's not the simple fact that Snyder has more money than most, it's that politicians are happy to take his money and then work on his behalf to screw over everybody else for his benefit. I don't know at what point we stop electing people like that but it needs to happen very very soon.

I was born in the 90s. I have spent the last four years trying to get a proper job, and finally got one now (factory desk job)... in England. To where I will be moving in a few weeks.

I don't even have a bad education or anything and I managed to get unpaid experience in half a dozen places. I made applications every day, walked around physically, and sought help via government (which was extremely ineffective and a waste of time). I got the job in England through pure luck.

There is no way getting something as foundational and necessary as a job should be so frustrating.

Prestor Jon wrote:
It's like baking cookies. I can bake cookies and you can bake cookies and Lebron James can bake cookies and the Staples delivery guy who was at our office this morning can bake cookies, an accountant in Seattle can bake cookies, a restaurant owner in Tulsa can bake cookies, a teacher in Newark can bake cookies. We can all bake cookies and have more cookies without having to take cookies out of other peoples' cookie jars. People like Lebron can bake more cookies than you or me, even hire pastry chefs to bake even more cookies for him and it still doesn't limit your or my ability to bake more cookies. Chips Ahoy and Nestle Tollhouse can make enough cookies to feed the world and you and I can still bake all the cookies we want.

That analogy only works if you ignore the rest of the cookie industry and look at it in isolation. If one likes baking cookies in their hut in the forest somewhere and doesn't interact with other people then it works for them but for the rest of us who live in a heavily connected civilisation that example/thought experiment is insufficient in its scope, way to simplistic, and just useless.

What do you do with all those cookies? I am assuming they are a proxy for capital and work. If you need to sell those cookies to make money to live then the other person who can buy factories and get ingredients cheaper (economies of scale) has the advantage over you. The end result (if you push it far enough) being some sort of monopoly with you on the other side having way too many cookies and not enough people to buy them because the ones who could make cookies cheaper sold to the biggest chunk of consumers.

Now you are sitting in your kitchen with more cookies than you know what to do with (you spend money on those and they are rotting away) and the people who made their money by selling cookie are now lobbying to make it harder for your and create benefits or subsidies that for the most part only help them.

On in real terms: While I can do my job and benefit from it (to a degree) the people with influence/money/power can stack the system in their favour in a way that makes my work worth less than theirs in the end. Look at the 2008 recession. All the money that was pumped into companies to keep them alive benefited those people who could exploit that situation (if you were working class and just lost your job your first action was probably not to buy cheap assets when share prices were dropping) while the same money and inflation made the work of the poor and the working class worth less. You can work all you want but the system is stacked against you even if a few of us manage to crawl out of this situation.

Here's what real wealth makes possible in the USA (other developed countries have similar, maybe not that pronounced problems): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig A regular person just can't compete fairly in such a system.

Here's an example of that in action. Disney sells tons of limited run items that have to be purchased within their parks. They are, of course, a megacorporation.

This led to private shoppers setting up small businesses solely dedicated to buying the more desirable limited items and reselling them to those who are not able to be at the parks during the release windows. To be clear, we're not talking 500% markup scalpers, like sports tickets or anything.

https://wdwnt.com/2018/12/disneyland-addresses-souvenir-resale-issue-by-allegedly-revoking-annual-pass-privileges/

Now I'm not saying it's right or it's wrong, but it does seem to illustrate the point that the megacorps are smushing the slightest hint of competition.

 Ashiraya wrote:
There is no way getting something as foundational and necessary as a job should be so frustrating.

So say we all.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Well doing those things cost money. If you don't have money you need to get it from people who do. So when a few people are hoarding wealth and not spreading it yeah, they are preventing that. Saying the pie can grow means nothing because that growth is not evenly distributed to all areas. Put simply the rich have their slice growing while for the rest of us it is remaining static at best. On average it is shrinking because expenses have grown faster than wages.

Or put differently, name one instance when increased centralization of wealth has not led to a decline in quality of life for the majority. When that is and has always been the direct cause-and-effect it is silly to suggest it could be anything else without compelling evidence.

Not that it is a matter of the masses being blameless victims in all this. Objection to the trend has been plentiful but actions speak louder than words; actions have been dominated by apathy and what amounts to 'yes daddy hit me harder!'

No you don't have to take money from other people in order to get more. You can generate more money/wealth for yourself without having to subtract money/wealth from others. If you get a raise at work none of your coworkers have to suffer offsetting pay cuts, if you home appreciates in value nobody else's home has to depreciate in value, if your 401(k)/stock portfolio has a good year in the market nobody else has to suffer an offsetting bad year in the market, if you want to acquire more education or skills nobody else has to have less education or skills.

What? No, this is nonsense.

At any given moment there is a finite amount of money in the world. It *is* a zero-sum game.

If you get a raise at work, your company gives you more money. Your company then has less money for other stuff - even if ultimately that is 'just' less profit, resulting in less value / money to shareholders.

If your home (or any other asset) appreciates in value, that only actually comes into effect if you sell it - at which point you get the money from the buyer.

Your investments doing well is ultimately going to be as a result of the companies you have invested in managing to take more money from their customers.

Acquiring education isn't relevant..?

Crispy78 wrote:

At any given moment there is a finite amount of money in the world. It *is* a zero-sum game.

But only at any given moment. Almost every economy on Earth has an expanding money supply, because almost every government treasury/bank can issue more money. This may or may not cause inflation, depending on circumstance.

Additionally, the flow of money through the economy allows for there to effectively be more money in the economy. If you make $50,000 and spend $50,000, you get $50,000 worth of goods and services while that money goes back into the economy to allow someone else to spend it on goods and services. So that $50,000 can be earned and spent by multiple people, making them all wealthier, at the cost of consuming resources.

So a finite money supply can cause economic growth, as long as that money circulates through the economy fast enough. Don't hoard cash under a mattress, it's bad for the economy. At least in a bank it's being used to provide loans (at a greater than 1:1 ratio, causing even more economic growth).

Crispy78 wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Well doing those things cost money. If you don't have money you need to get it from people who do. So when a few people are hoarding wealth and not spreading it yeah, they are preventing that. Saying the pie can grow means nothing because that growth is not evenly distributed to all areas. Put simply the rich have their slice growing while for the rest of us it is remaining static at best. On average it is shrinking because expenses have grown faster than wages.

Or put differently, name one instance when increased centralization of wealth has not led to a decline in quality of life for the majority. When that is and has always been the direct cause-and-effect it is silly to suggest it could be anything else without compelling evidence.

Not that it is a matter of the masses being blameless victims in all this. Objection to the trend has been plentiful but actions speak louder than words; actions have been dominated by apathy and what amounts to 'yes daddy hit me harder!'

No you don't have to take money from other people in order to get more. You can generate more money/wealth for yourself without having to subtract money/wealth from others. If you get a raise at work none of your coworkers have to suffer offsetting pay cuts, if you home appreciates in value nobody else's home has to depreciate in value, if your 401(k)/stock portfolio has a good year in the market nobody else has to suffer an offsetting bad year in the market, if you want to acquire more education or skills nobody else has to have less education or skills.

What? No, this is nonsense.

At any given moment there is a finite amount of money in the world. It *is* a zero-sum game.

If you get a raise at work, your company gives you more money. Your company then has less money for other stuff - even if ultimately that is 'just' less profit, resulting in less value / money to shareholders.

If your home (or any other asset) appreciates in value, that only actually comes into effect if you sell it - at which point you get the money from the buyer.

Your investments doing well is ultimately going to be as a result of the companies you have invested in managing to take more money from their customers.

Acquiring education isn't relevant..?

Not true. There isn't a finite amount of money in the world, or rather there isn't a finite amount of "wealth" in the world. The belief that wealth is finite is the core tenant of Mercantilism, and that was debunked long ago. Another wrong idea was that Money=Wealth, when really Wealth= Money, goods, and services. None of which are necessarily finite.

To illustrate this,

Say you have a $1 bill. Lets say it is the only paper currency in this particular economy, which contains you, Bob, Jim, and Steve.

You are hungry. So you take your $1 and buy a dozen eggs from Bob. Bob then needs some new shoes, so he purchases a pair of shoes from Jim for $1. Jim then takes that $1 and buys some rope from Steve. Steve then takes that $1 and pays you to fix his roof. You now have your $1 back.

How much "wealth" traded hands in this series of events? The answer is $4. Your $1 was worth a total of $4 for the entire economy. The economy is also worth much more depending on how many goods exist as well. How many dozen eggs, coils of rope, shoes, etc... exist also contribute their value to the economy.

Now true, much of the wealth in the world isn't liquid. Its not in a form that is being traded for goods and services, but it is providing the financial capital to fund all the businesses that exist. Money being kept in banks just sitting there accruing interest isn't idle money. Its being lent to people who then spend it, and presumably pay it back with interest.

The only time this arrangement collapses is when people don't pay the loans back. Which is why banks shouldn't lend money to people who can't afford to borrow it, and the government shouldn't put policies in place which encourage such behavior and people shouldn't be stupid and take out loans/credit cards they can't afford to pay back. Thats the real reason for the last economic collapse. It was a mixture of borrower's borrowing well beyond what they could afford and lenders deciding to lend to those same people.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 John Prins wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:

At any given moment there is a finite amount of money in the world. It *is* a zero-sum game.

But only at any given moment. Almost every economy on Earth has an expanding money supply, because almost every government treasury/bank can issue more money. This may or may not cause inflation, depending on circumstance.

Additionally, the flow of money through the economy allows for there to effectively be more money in the economy. If you make $50,000 and spend $50,000, you get $50,000 worth of goods and services while that money goes back into the economy to allow someone else to spend it on goods and services. So that $50,000 can be earned and spent by multiple people, making them all wealthier, at the cost of consuming resources.

So a finite money supply can cause economic growth, as long as that money circulates through the economy fast enough. Don't hoard cash under a mattress, it's bad for the economy. At least in a bank it's being used to provide loans (at a greater than 1:1 ratio, causing even more economic growth).

Exactly. Any cash that isn't hidden in a Scrouge McDuck vault, or similar hideaway, is causing economic expansion. And thus there isn't a finite amount of wealth.

But people with insane levels of wealth don't spend their money to the same extent as the poor. There's diminishing returns on each additional dollar earned. Wealth concentration thus does de facto lock out those where the wealth is not concentrated.