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philipl
Guest
Its not free. It is earned. A company has to grow for me to earn.
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zz912
Guest
Such disdain for those who manage to save up money instead of spending their every dime.
Demonizing investors is a surefire way to hurt your economy. And claiming that a diversified portfolio reduces risk to almost zero is stunningly wrong.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
It is free to you.
When the government confiscates roughly 15% of a worker’s earnings in FICA “contributions”, that tends to put people into a position of relying on SS more than originally intended
Taking risks is a big thing.
If it was easy, everyone would do it.
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abucs
Guest
Leaf,
before i point out the differences between private income that is earned and has to be continually earned against government money which is taken and has to be continually taken; let me ask you what you think of Adolf Hitler;s 25 point National Socialist Program.
Specifically point 10-11.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unearned_income
before i point out the differences between private income that is earned and has to be continually earned against government money which is taken and has to be continually taken; let me ask you what you think of Adolf Hitler;s 25 point National Socialist Program.
Specifically point 10-11.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unearned_income
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
Yes, the big problem is having the money to take those risks in the first place. That’s why not everyone does it.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
Please connect this with anything I have written or anything anyone else has written in this thread so I know where you are going with this. As it is, I just don’t understand your point.
You can take risks and make the investment at any income level.
The minimum wage earner can likewise risk some money, invest, and earn income off of the investment.
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abucs
Guest
It’s a question, not a point.
It is asking you to comment on the very important historical case of the German National Socialist government speaking about unearned income and how it should be viewed.
I am asking you to review these historical ideas and comment on how it compares to your own views on the matter of unearned income and government policies.
Where i am going with this, eventually, is to make the observation that there has been so much evil done in this world under the guise of being good. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the plethora of socialist governments last century who convinced enough people that it was a moral good for governments to take wealth off people because really they don’t deserve it, but that it should be the property of socialist governments building their utopia’s.
Not only is such an idea theft, plain and simple, it is bad economics and produces the exact opposite of the ‘equality utopia’ it promises. There is a huge difference between money earned and money taken. One produces wealth and leads to prosperity, the other leads t financial ruin because of a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature and the continual creation of wealth.
But that is as you say, don the track. First of all i want to know if you share the starting point of the German National Socialists that people’s wealth that is invested in property etc or from inheritance is fair game to be taken by the state or whether it intrinsically belongs to those people and families who have earned it and have an absolute right to it.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
People living on the edge only have pennies to invest. They cannot earn much interest on pennies. But someone with $1,500K to invest can possibly stop working entirely and live off the income of those investments.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
No, I’m not going to follow you down that rabbit hole. Until you can explain the relevance of the question to what I have stated in this thread, I cannot answer.
It may be true that much evil has been done under the guise of being good. But much more good has been done by people trying to be good. Therefore your argument is not a valid attack on each and every effort to do good. Unless you can show some specific evil or flaw in whatever effort you wish to discredit.
I should remind you that I am on record as opposing the implementation of Universal Basic Income - at least for the foreseeable future. Not on ideological grounds but on practical grounds.
The concept you have outlined here is accepted not only by the German National Socialists, but by virtually every government on the planet. But from a more Catholic view, there is no such thing as a person intrinsically owning property. We are all stewards of property that belongs intrinsically only to to God. This is not to contradict the principle of private property. It is only to put it in its proper context. The Church recognizes the right legitimate authority to have some claim on the property of its citizens, mostly through taxation, which is also recognized by the Church as something legitimate authority can rightly do. That does not mean that all taxation is just. There is certainly such a thing as unjust taxation. But that needs to be established in the particular cases, not dismissed as theft across the board.
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abucs
Guest
I am trying to get you out of the rabbit hole Leaf.
Every government on the planet does not believe that they have a right to take people’s inheritance and that people do not have a right to invest in say property and receive income from it. Socialist governments do. Hitler’s national socialists did. Western governments today have moved away from such theft but there are many, mainly young people on the Left with stars in their eyes and an ignorance of history who would try to repeat the evil because they have been told it is a good.
Your original premise is that the government giving people money is very similar to investors receiving income.
It is nowhere near the same and it is a basically a flawed view of economics that is often based on falsely moral socialist views.
It is not a good. In fact it is a very dangerous evil to not properly distinguish between people’s own money and money taken by the government for redistribution.
That is not to say that money taken by the government is always an evil, but to not distinguish between the two is the foundation of the socialist evil of last century.
Proper understanding, communication, reflection, consideration and education is needed to prevent civilsation from falling back down that hell-hole of a rabbit hole once again.
Every government on the planet does not believe that they have a right to take people’s inheritance and that people do not have a right to invest in say property and receive income from it. Socialist governments do. Hitler’s national socialists did. Western governments today have moved away from such theft but there are many, mainly young people on the Left with stars in their eyes and an ignorance of history who would try to repeat the evil because they have been told it is a good.
Your original premise is that the government giving people money is very similar to investors receiving income.
It is nowhere near the same and it is a basically a flawed view of economics that is often based on falsely moral socialist views.
It is not a good. In fact it is a very dangerous evil to not properly distinguish between people’s own money and money taken by the government for redistribution.
That is not to say that money taken by the government is always an evil, but to not distinguish between the two is the foundation of the socialist evil of last century.
Proper understanding, communication, reflection, consideration and education is needed to prevent civilsation from falling back down that hell-hole of a rabbit hole once again.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
This is an exaggeration of my position. I did not support such a view.
Not in every respect, but it is similar in the one respect I mentioned, and that is that the income comes without the investor doing any work, and without the welfare recipient doing any work. The only distinction is that the investor had the money to invest and the welfare recipient did not.
Oh, I’ll grant you that the government giving out free money is economically unsound, regardless of what it is based on.
That is not the distinction that is being made (or failing to be made). The distinction you want me to make is between money taken by taxation for redistribution, and money from who knows where for redistribution to investors. The money the investors are getting back is not “their own money” in the sense that they worked for it. It is extra money. Their own money is temporarily residing with the company in which the investments were made. And they will normally get that money back too when they eventually call in their investments.
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abucs
Guest
I didn’t say it was your view. I asked you for your view and i pointed out the difference between socialist government and western governments of today.
No that is not the only distinction.
There is a fundamental difference between the number value of money and the wealth that it represents. A person placing their money with a fund manager is effectively going into a type of partnership where they give over their wealth to people they believe use it to create more wealth. In this ‘partnership’ both require something from the other and if it works out then there is more wealth at the end of it. Be that houses, food, medicine, office space, planes or whatever. Other people use their wealth (that they have to create) to buy these products. But there is no guarantees. If wealth is not created then the partnership fails and it is the investor who loses the most.
When you say ‘who knows where’ that is kind of the point. I know where and i know it is fundamentally different from where the government gets its money. The ‘who knows where’ is the important difference that needs to be talked about and recognised. It is not magic and it is not forcing others to give you money. It is the creation of wealth. Fund managers are not the government. That both groups give out checks/cheques is a very limited component of the reality of the economics happening behind the cheques/checks and the responsibilities and obligations of the people receiving the cheques/checks.
I do not understand the problem.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
Yes, the difference is that in our economic system, a given amount of money entitles you to more money. So in that sense the wealth that the money represents is the initial money plus the extra money you get for having that money.
For any conservative investment strategy, this almost always happens. It is not much of an “if it works out.”
This almost never happens for conservative investment strategies.
Regardless of where the money comes from, it is money that someone else cannot have. In the case of government funds paying a welfare recipient, that money comes from taxes. In the case of a company that used my investment, that money comes from the corporate profits that they would have kept, except for the fact that I have it now. Now you might argue that the corporate profits were given up voluntarily while the taxes were paid involuntarily. But the corporate profits were given up only because there would have been very negative consequences if the company had failed to live up to their contract to pay the investors their interest. If that company could have gotten away with not paying investors and have no negative consequences, you can be sure that’s what they would have done. This is comparable to people paying taxes because there are very negative consequences of not paying it. So the distinction between voluntary and involuntary contributes is not that great.
Did you remember that I said I do not support the implementation of a UBI?
It would be exceptionally rare that every single penny is utilized.
But your reaction does illustrate that risk should be rewarded well.
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abucs
Guest
No you are not entitled to more money if you have money. If you have wealth you can invest it, and if done intelligently, it will create more wealth.
No this is incorrect. The government prints extra money each year which devalues citizens money. You have to increase the money value by 3-4% just to stay even with regards to how much wealth you have. This is the difference between wealth and the money value. Many pensioners put their ‘money’ in conservative strategies with the understanding that it gets devalued each year because of government printing money (inflation). There are times of low interest rates where conservative approaches regularly underperform inflation. This is a loss in wealth terms. Add to this that you spend money, that there are divorces or medical expenses or that children and other beneficiaries receive money in inheritance. It is not a pot of gold that if invested in conservative strategies will last forever. Investors have to be pro-active otherwise it will go. This in part is an explanation why wealth is more likely to be created in private hands rather than government hands.
It is hugely different and it is not correct to dismiss at the start with the phrase “regardless of where the money comes from”. If you have money in a company then you are a partner in that company and by the way company ownership is not in general a conservative strategy as say fixed interest and government bonds are.
An easy mistake of those who still think in terms of socialist terms is that they believe companies are just like governments and therefore let the government replace companies. They are completely different and no move to have the government replace companies has ever resulted in anything other than economic collapse. This is why for example that the Chinese government is busy privatising it’s industries and placing them on the stockmarket, encouraging citizens to buy shares in the new companies.
Money in private hands through companies tend to create wealth. In government hands there is a concentration on redistribution which is disconnected from wealth creation and personal initiative and responsibility. The clear difference is in the role of the investor.
Yes i remembered.
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