Distribution of Wealth VS Standard of Living

If you give everyone the same amount of money REGARDLESS of what they do, they may all go into retail sales! WHY? NO heavy lifting for warehouses, NO heat for flipping burgers, NO bites from animals for vets, NO death from police, etc... NO malpractice like doctors have, etc.........

THINK of it!

But who will make the stuff to be sold?

THEN AGAIN, if someone does NOTHING, though they can do something, WHY should they expect ANYTHING "in return"? If they sell a screw, WHY should they make the same as someone that sells a boat?

Steve

No - I like the idea of some being rich and some being poor as long as the rich aren't getting that way by abusing the poorer classes. When a society feeds on itself it collapses.

But - for society to make work available to people should be a standard practice, too. We have welfare, and now generations of welfare. It's messing up everything. What if we'd offered hourly pay to those people for performing tasks society needs done - picking crops, picking up trash, maintaining forestry and fighting noxious invasive plants, etc.
Work needs to be distributed, not money - work that doesn't require rocket science brain power to do as well as that which does -- people need to do something productive for the money. Had we given people on welfare jobs instead of welfare, we'd have solved a lot of problems.

If we distribute money throughout society evenly just for being here, there is no impetus for people to reach and grow.

heysal, I forget the name of it now, but I actually got my first job through a california government office that provides those jobs. MANY jobs were for unskilled, or moderately skilled, workers. SO, at least about 30 years ago, california DID have a place that was TRYING. YEAH, they could have done better. Some of the people working there maybe should have taken one of the other jobs, but they were there all the same. (Frankly, they were like DMV workers. Try going to the DMV in van nuys! Better get there EARLY, or you will be waiting ALL DAY, and BETTER get in the right line!) And many of the jobs offered were NOT minimum wage jobs either.

Steve

I would deny the two options you've given me and select a third option. Everyone gets a scale 10 quality of life.

But it's your thread so I'll answer your question.

I'd be forced to choose the many billionaires / many very low income option. I think that the other option would be horrible for human beings as it would totally eliminate the possibility for improvement. I think that comes closely after the need for food, water, and air. I personally can't imagine a world where I know that tomorrow will be no better than today.

Hopefully the billionaires will have sufficient human emotion to help out the very poor.

The interesting thing about this is that:

1. Money OBVIOUSLY has a value, and everyone AUTOMATICALLY realizes this by their actions! They steal for it, kill for it, etc.... So they KNOW it has value!

2. They KNOW its value is for payment(aka EXCHANGE).

3. They KNOW money's value isn't constant, prices change, GOLD prices change!

4. They KNOW value is based on supply/demand. Just look at how even very POOR people react when they get money! They may buy a rolex KNOWING that it will cost MUCH more!

5. They KNOW that more risk, or less supply, means a higher price! I mean HECK, would they rob a bank for $10? Why do they set a high price for risky things? They KNOW doctors get paid more than short order cooks.

OK, HOW can they know ALL this, and STILL suggest that we should simply pay, to get rid of poverty, and they REFUSE to use 2 and 5 to GET IT LEGITIMATELY!

Steve

Just to respond....

If I make a statement about taxes, people often speak of europe. I then bring up my experience with denmark, known for having HIGH taxes. Because of the high income/expense ratio, the taxes don't seem that bad anyway, but you CAN see how the taxes are spent.

And YEAH, when people talk about like $20,000 hammers, or whatever the cost is, it isn't the fact that a hammer was bought, but the cost for the hammer.

In the last place I worked, we would get RFPs that were VERY specific with antiquated equipment and the little app came with another document that basically said we shouldn't apply. HEY, a bid should be for a bid with the best tradeoff of product/history/price winning.

And one day in LA I noticed something WIERD! They replaced ALL the walk/don't walk signs(The ENTIRE UNIT! pole, lights, filter, etc... I heard somewhere it cost like $5000 per, and I am talking about potentially MILLIONS being replaced). Later, they said it was for the olympics. Now THAT was STUPID! The ONLY thing I can think of is that they figured the world was too stupid to learn green=go, red=stop, or walk/don't walk.
The NEW signs are STILL red/green, but have a red hand, and green characters walking.

GEE, maybe the lights the Danes have are stupid. I mean they have a little beeper that starts slow, and gradually speeds up. Blind people somehow have to learn that beep..................beep....................beep means OK, it is safe to start walking. beep..beep..beep means LOOK, if you are in the center of the road, MOVE IT!, if you haven't started walking, maybe you shouldn't.

I hope you see my levity. I APPRECIATE the Danish signs, but replacing all these signs so people don't have to learn TWO words they SHOULD learn is just STUPID! ESPECIALLY when most don't even have to do THAT much! BTW the US signs STILL don't work for blind people!

Steve

Sure they will - um........the screaming you hear right now isn't a jet. It's the welfarers who just got their ability to use their welfare checks at Casinos cut off that are doing the screaming. Um - getting them to work for those bucks might take awhile.

One of the reasons for the 55MPH speed limit was that the federal government said that UNLESS states made that a STATE limit, they wouldn't get financing for the roads. Still, the STATES pay the FED. The FED payment to the states is more a rebate than anything else.

AND, following from what kurt said, nobody would complain about the 8-2% drop if the money did something else worthwhile, or was refunded. HECK, yesterday, they revealed that NASA was requested to help muslims feel good. It is amazing the piddly little things that are requested, even as FAR more important ones are glossed over.

And we may end up spending MILLIONS, or even BILLIONS on translation, interpreters, printing, etc... to recruit someone MERELY because they are moslem.

Meanwhile, a ship in the gulf that can do NO harm is left to wait to be approved because it might not be 100% efficient. If I were responsible, I would simply ask them to clean up a swath of oil and, if it was noticably cleaner and/or they could show they picked up the oil, I would say GREAT, do as much as you can. Frankly, they may do it for FREE, because they ARE getting oil. OUR trash literally becomes THEIR treasure! If BP wants it, they can PAY for it!

BTW TL, the marketplace DOES solve problems. In California, there was a place called valencia. They tried to create some homes to help out businesses in the city. Eventually, they got EVERYTHING! It is a city in its own right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valenci...ta,_California HECK, PALMDALE was the SAME way! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmdale,_California BOTH built because the market had a need and, lacking infrastructure, GOT IT!

The only problem, of course, is that it means a LOT of people, at least for a few decades, drive the same way around the start and end of business. One reason why half the freeway goes FAR slower than the other around those two periods. AND, in both cases, there WAS state and therefore federal funding as well, but that is how it is supposed to be.

Steve