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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please. In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. | ||
KwarK
United States44183 Posts
On November 30 2017 13:10 NewSunshine wrote: facepalm Don't worry Donald, she has better things to do than worry about your stupid ass. That was actually his second attempt. ![[image loading]](https://archive.is/U4Nh6/c221e5d54abdbe1708c536c73e9c95a276634e58/scr.png) His first one was tweeting a different Theresa May. | ||
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mozoku
United States708 Posts
On November 30 2017 14:11 KwarK wrote: I have an awful lot of trouble with your "liberals don't consider the effect of their redistributive policies on growth" when redistribution increases growth. The two are correlated. Then why is the only growth justification I've heard for redistribution is the silly "consumption>investment" line, occasionally followed by vague assertions about velocity? If you don't have any well-founded theory and your argument is based on empirical correlations in macroeconomics, forgive me for ignoring you. | ||
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
I don’t blame you for doing that either. | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States24130 Posts
On November 30 2017 14:22 xDaunt wrote: Let’s just put the obvious considerations of intrinsic human jealousy aside for a moment and ask the following: why is wealth inequality, in and of itself, a bad thing? Perhaps in a world where there wasn't slavery and people starving with little/no access to clean drinking water you might have a point. But pretending that starving people in a world with billionaires isn't directly related to wealth inequality I have little faith there's a reasonable discussion to be had. | ||
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
On November 30 2017 14:22 xDaunt wrote: Let’s just put the obvious considerations of intrinsic human jealousy aside for a moment and ask the following: why is wealth inequality, in and of itself, a bad thing? In and of itself it isn't. Unfortunately high inequality doesn't exist in a vacuum, and is often(always?) accompanied by a languishing lower class. | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15743 Posts
On November 30 2017 14:22 xDaunt wrote: Let’s just put the obvious considerations of intrinsic human jealousy aside for a moment and ask the following: why is wealth inequality, in and of itself, a bad thing? Productivity goes down and reliance on government assistance goes up. It's just a matter of if the government or the rich foot the bill. But it goes beyond who covers the bill because once people enter into poverty, they also become less healthy, happy and motivated. This leads to higher medical costs overall, which disproportionately negatively impacts people in poverty. But there are many costs beyond medical costs. When people are able to stay above a minimum level, this self fueling, negative net drain to society is prevented. It makes humans significantly less overall efficient and valuable when they are allowed to dip too low. It's like getting your oil changed. Paying to keep your oil changed prevents the engine from needing to be replaced. Similarly, keeping people above the poverty line prevents poverty-induced effects that make poverty worse. Band-Aids are cheaper than treating and infection. Etc. To be clear, there are no problems simply with people being too rich. The issue is that too many people are too poor. People engines who don't have their oil changed become a net drain rather than a wealth creator. Investment in bringing people out of poverty creates wealth and prevents drain. So long as that is done, it doesn't matter if others are even more insanely rich. The issue is that a lot of people really need to be getting more help. | ||
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
Jared Kushner was questioned this month by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of investigators about the former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a person familiar with the investigation confirmed Wednesday to the Associated Press. The person said the questioning of Donald Trump’s son-in-law took about 90 minutes or less and was aimed in part at establishing whether Kushner had any information on Flynn that might be exculpatory. The person added that multiple White House witnesses had been asked about their knowledge of Flynn, who was forced to resign from the White House in February after officials concluded he had misled them about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. The confirmation of Kushner’s interview came as prosecutors working for Mueller postponed grand jury testimony related to Flynn’s private business dealings. The reason for the postponement, first reported by CNN, was not immediately clear, but it comes one week after attorneys for Flynn alerted Trump’s legal team that they could no longer share information about the case. That discussion between lawyers was widely seen as a possible indication that Flynn was moving to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation or attempting to negotiate a deal for himself. An attorney for Flynn, Robert Kelner, did not immediately respond to email and phone messages Wednesday afternoon. Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, declined comment. In a statement, Kushner’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said: “Mr Kushner has voluntarily cooperated with all relevant inquiries and will continue to do so.” The details of Kushner’s questioning and the postponement of the grand jury testimony were confirmed by people familiar with Mueller’s investigation. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the continuing investigation. The grand testimony that had been scheduled for the coming days related to Flynn’s firm, Flynn Intel Group, its work with a public relations firm and interactions with congressional staff, one of the people said. Mueller and the FBI have been interested in hearing from employees at the public relations firm, SGR, because of the firm’s work with Flynn Intel Group. SGR, which does business as Sphere Consulting, contributed to a film that Flynn Intel Group was working on about the Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen. The film was never completed. Mueller was appointed by the justice department in May to oversee an investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The investigation, which produced its first criminal charges last month against three former Trump campaign officials, incorporated an earlier FBI inquiry into Flynn’s lobbying and investigative research work on behalf of a Turkish businessman. Flynn’s firm was paid $530,000 for the work. Sphere employees have cooperated for months with Mueller’s investigation, including by turning over documents requested by investigators and sitting for voluntary interviews. Source | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
On November 30 2017 14:31 GreenHorizons wrote: Perhaps in a world where there wasn't slavery and people starving with little/no access to clean drinking water you might have a point. But pretending that starving people in a world with billionaires isn't directly related to wealth inequality I have little faith there's a reasonable discussion to be had. The starving people happen to predominantly live in shitty countries with shitty social systems that are based on shitty values. Remember what I said earlier about nationalism being a good thing? It’s our defense from becoming like those shitty countries and it’s the method of eliminating their shitty values. Every time one of these poor and ass backwards countries starts to implement classical liberal, capitalist systems, they begin to accumulate wealth and the standard of living for the citizens improves. Take a look at Chile for example. We also have plenty of examples of countries that were doing well with Western systems, subsequently dismantled those systems, and utterly impoverished their people — like Zimbabwe. Do people really believe that these things are purely coincidental? | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
On November 30 2017 14:25 Danglars wrote: Last time this was posed to thread leftists, I think the best response was violent revolution or high civil unrest. Right, which are issues derived from jealousy. | ||
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KwarK
United States44183 Posts
Additionally Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan which are often cited as capitalist triumphs are all far from model multiparty party democracies. It is tempting to assume these countries must have similar political systems to our own but they do not. Whereas India, which is a capitalist multiparty republic, has underperformed economically and routinely fails to properly feed its people, despite your allusions to starvation being an African anti capitalist issue. | ||
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KwarK
United States44183 Posts
On November 30 2017 14:49 xDaunt wrote: Right, which are issues derived from jealousy. Was the American Revolution due to jealousy? The French? The October? The Glorious? | ||
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doomdonker
90 Posts
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
On November 30 2017 14:22 xDaunt wrote: Let’s just put the obvious considerations of intrinsic human jealousy aside for a moment and ask the following: why is wealth inequality, in and of itself, a bad thing? leads to lower econ growth because a less dynamic economy discourages entrepreneurship. Can be seen with low entrepreneurship rates among millenials because they're too busy scraping money for a house or their college tuition. Most developed societies are aging so piling inequality on top of the youth is probably a bad idea. Also you can make a kind of Hayekian argument. For him prices were a discovery mechanism about who wants want. The more people participate in an economy, the more accurate the market reflects intentions and produces better results. Excluding large portions of people from the market can lead to misallocation of resources. Probably seen in practice in oligarchies were money in the hands of a few leads to useless spending and extravagances while important sectors remain underdeveloped. | ||
Liquid`Drone
Norway28854 Posts
On November 30 2017 05:48 mozoku wrote: Would you agree with the statement "The value of my countryman's life is worth more than a foreigner's."? Is someone immoral for doing so? Isn't the statement a form of nationalism? Why is it socially taboo in certain circles to agree with the statement above, yet socially acceptable to agree with the statement "The value of my family member's life is worth more than a stranger"? I absolutely think that above position is an immoral position to hold and I've yet to see anyone convincingly argue otherwise. I've seen many people state 'we should value our own countrymen more than foreigners' - but I've never seen any moral justification for this statement. It mostly comes off as a 'I'm a countryman and I want some of the benefits to go to me - increasing the pool with another 7 billion people makes those benefits dwindle away'. But that's not a moral argument, that's a selfish one. Valuing the life of your family member above that of a stranger appears to be much more a question of 'human nature' - nobody (who doesn't have an exceptionally shitty family) doesn't feel that way. That you value people you have a personal relationship to over people you have no personal relationship to is perfectly natural and not something you can combat. I think humans are more important than dogs, too, but I'd certainly prefer two random strangers dying over my two dogs dying. You could perhaps argue that there's a sliding scale of how much of a relationship you have with someone and their relative importance to you, where family is 10 friends are 8.7 and being from the same country is 0.6 and same continent is 0.2 and thus I should care more about random norwegians than random europeans than random africans, but I'd ask 'why'? I think with regard to whether being born in the same country as someone gives you a personal relationship with soimeone. I'd say evidently that is not the case. 'The nation' is not a good metric for indicating cultural commonality. Age, urban-rural, political preference, whether someone likes starcraft or counter strike, whether someone likes futurama or the Saw movie franchise, whether someone likes 70s prog or EDM, all of these are stronger indicators of how much I have in common with them and thus how much I care about their untimely demise, than 'birthplace' is. Mostly though I just think it's important that we strive for acknowledging the equal worth of all human beings and that we work to factor that acknowledgement into political action. That people favor people they have a personal relationship to seems inevitable and trying to combat that probably isn't fruitful, but as society, we should want to decrease the trend of differential treatment of humans, not encourage it. | ||
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Kyadytim
United States886 Posts
On November 30 2017 14:47 xDaunt wrote: The starving people happen to predominantly live in shitty countries with shitty social systems that are based on shitty values. Remember what I said earlier about nationalism being a good thing? It’s our defense from becoming like those shitty countries and it’s the method of eliminating their shitty values. Every time one of these poor and ass backwards countries starts to implement classical liberal, capitalist systems, they begin to accumulate wealth and the standard of living for the citizens improves. Take a look at Chile for example. We also have plenty of examples of countries that were doing well with Western systems, subsequently dismantled those systems, and utterly impoverished their people — like Zimbabwe. Do people really believe that these things are purely coincidental? Maybe start by addressing the massive wealth inequality in the US and how it might relate to the fact that there are more unoccupied houses in the country than their are homeless people, at around a six to one ration. Those houses represent wealth that is doing nothing in the hands of people who clearly have more wealth than they need. There's a similar problem with perfectly edible food being thrown out because it doesn't look nice, but I don't feel like looking up the numbers on it. An argument could be made that these are both failures of capitalism as an economic system, but let's ignore that for the moment. The point here is that there is a huge wealth inequality, and it causes markets for certain goods such as houses to stop moving because there is no money circulating in that market anymore. I am not advocating that the government seize houses and give them to the homeless. The point here is that there are plenty of houses to go around, but because of people owning more than they need, other people go without. This can, in principle, be expanded to the entire economy. The economy is not zero sum, but all of the parts of it have to add up to 100%. In 2011, that pie allotted 7% of the wealth to 80% of the people. Given the number of people who are homeless, on food stamps, or otherwise failing to have basic needs met, that is clearly an insufficient allocation of wealth to that 80% of the population. | ||
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Kyadytim
United States886 Posts
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Furikawari
France2522 Posts
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mozoku
United States708 Posts
Maybe start by addressing the massive wealth inequality in the US and how it might relate to the fact that there are more unoccupied houses in the country than their are homeless people, at around a six to one ration. Those houses represent wealth that is doing nothing in the hands of people who clearly have more wealth than they need. What is the overall homeless rate though? If the homeless rate is like 0.01%, you'd expect to see numbers like that because vacancies due to the housing shuffle of the 99.99% would of course be many times larger than the tiny total homeless population. In concrete terms, if there's 10,000 people in a town and one homeless guy, you wouldn't find it unreasonable at all that there would be more than 6 homes available at a given time due to the 10,000 people moving around, and that's independent of inequality. The counterargument to your more general point is that you can more effectively solve poverty by redistributing frugally and using the saved resources to improve the means of production (i.e. total wealth)... which allows for more generous redistribution (in absolute $$) in the future. As opposed to redistributing maximally now at the cost of investment, leading to weaker growth and perhaps even the unsustainable destruction of wealth if consumption exceeds the total returns on investment. It's worth noting that, even despite all of the news about wealth inequality and poverty, the bottom 10% in America today is fabulously wealthy compared to the bottom 10% 100 years ago. And the median American income is a roughly top 1% income earner worldwide. Hence the focus on growth. | ||
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