Income Inequality in America

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There is a commonality amongst all of these political and economic systems. They are nation states. I'm just speculating out in the dark but what if capitalism, communism, socialism isn't the problem? What if it is the concept of the nation state that is the problem?

We've been trying to use various systems and philosophies to figure out how to govern a nation state? What if the nation state is unmanageable and ungovernable once it reaches a certain point called the point of diminishing returns? I've been wondering about this for a long time but what if it is time to dissolve the nation state and maybe have town or city states in which the government is smaller and more responsive to their respective states.

If one is not happy in his town state then he can go to another one.

It is argued that there ought to be more currencies, not fewer, as they tend to be designed for the interests of one part of a country over the rest. Carl Menger's malign influence however has led things in the opposite direction.

Sure, unemployment is useful for driving down real wages, but why would the elite want that outcome when it reduces consumption and leads to periodic economic crisis that hurts even the elite? Also when unemployment gets bad enough the productivity to wages ratio levels off or goes down rather than up because the labor "shirking" effect that class tension creates overtakes the ability of capital owners to profit by driving down wages. Also, creating an environment with rampant crime and political unrest doesn't exactly create a healthy environment for the "elites" to flourish. Something tells me neoliberalism is driven more by misguided beliefs than outright conspiracy.

Oh, this belief system has a name. I did not know it was called neoliberalism.

Honestly, we're not changing Reuven and Fnord's beliefs and how they conduct themselves whatsoever. Debating with them has not improved our lives one single bit. We don't need more debates. We need solutions and need them prompto. This whole philosophy they believe in is fallacious in nature when it is taken to its logical conclusion. The thing is though most of America is going in the neoliberal direction.

The truth is he who owns all the gold makes the rules. In the way we're going we will not win. What we really need to do is to go to the drawing board and come up with practical solutions that do not depend debating on those who do not want to help us.

I'm thinking of coming up with my own board in which we come up with practical solutions to our issues. If we're going to be able to have success we need to work together. We need to find our own promised land. Marshall, will you please pm me?

I am going to make a concerted effort not to debate with them anymore

If anyone can point to a current political and economic system that has completely eliminated poverty, yet still allows for its citizens to become wealthy without exploiting others, I'd like to know about it.

There is no political or economic system that can meet your criteria. The problem is people. People would have to want to help others out of their circumstances. Life is not fair is a true statement is it not. People would have to desire to negate it on a massive level.

Trying to create the perfect economic or political system is a waste of time. People would have to choose to change from the inside out. A good economic and political system would have to come from a good people. Coupons are not allowed to be sold on ebay or anyone. Yet it is done anyway and it is legal to. This law was circumvented. People sell their services of cutting the coupons out.

Human nature is the problem my friend which is why OWS is a waste of time, effort, and resources. There is enough people who do not want things to change so it will not no matter what rationale one uses.

Even though Harry Browne has different views than I do I believe we need to follow some of his advice
http://eiiiforum.com/picsfromusers/howifoundfreedom.pdf

The problem is people are rigid thinkers and fearful of change. It's just not a good idea for a society to be fearful of change when the boat of humanity is careening towards a waterfall. The problem is some people refuse to see the big picture because to them its all about the individual and there's absolutely nothing else to anything.

"there is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families."
Margaret Thatcher

The problem is with that attitude people will always be fighting and scrapping over limited resources. Wealth gives us the illusion of civilized society. That will collapse as soon as too many people cannot eat.


Sure.

We most certainly can. But in recognizing that we are, "reasonably certain," we must always acknowledge room for doubt, for error and for inconsistency.



Well, first of all, capitalism favour no one. Capitalism is simply a political-economic environment in which private resources are used to create production.

But even if you meant to say, "Autistics don't do well in capitalist systems," I still say you're wrong. If I have resources, I can freely trade those to an entrepreneur in exchange for future payment. I take the risk, and I assess that risk against the value of the future reward. Autistics are no less able to make investment decisions than any other person. Indeed, some of us might be significantly better at it. I'm sure there are one or two savants making a killing as day traders.

In the fields where we are challenged, neither capitalism nor any other -ism will mitigate that challenge. No matter what society we live in, we have to compete for access to the things we need. We have to compete for places in higher education. We have to compete for jobs. We have to compete for relationships. Even if you live in a society in which food, employment and housing are given to you, you still have to compete for those commodities and services that are managed by scarcity.

When you change -isms, you just substitute one form of competition for another.

In addition, one has to compete for space as well. We only have but so much room on the planet.

Enough said.

End of Thread.

There is no need to become wealthy.

You are correct that there will always be competition. Competition itself isn't the problem IMO. The problem is self-reinforcing stratification processes that cause wealth and power to concentrate in the hands of fewer and fewer people over time. The economy of scale favors this. Cost is continually driven down as competing companies look for ways to produce more while employing and paying less. This is all fine and well when the economy is in a growth stage such that infrastructure, technology, and the amount of goods and services in the market is increasing.

The problems occur when we hit a stage where growth begins to level off because the economy has matured and is approaching the limit of maximum efficiency on existing goods without enough new goods entering the market. Credit dries up when investors stop seeing the potential for positive returns on investment and then boom, unemployment happens. Central banks try to keep this from happening by expanding the monetary base and encouraging borrowing but it always comes to a point where the lenders lose faith and start waiting for money to flow back to themselves before lending out more, even with interest rates as low as they can possibly go.

But there is no economy in which there is not some redistribution of wealth. The trick for policy makers is to find the balance between reducing income inequality, without disincentivizing investment and production.



Fuelling economic growth with credit is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. What is bad is when it is fuelled with unsustainable debt. Again, policy makers need to look for the moderated approach.

I agree with this but I think the policy-makers have lost sight of this simple truth. Anyone *should* be happy beyond their wildest dreams if their net worth was, say $100 million, or even only $10 million. Just knowing that such wealth is obtainable should be more than enough motivation for anyone to try hard, get educated, put in the effort, try to innovate, etc. But instead we have people whose net worth is hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, who are still not happy, who continue to exhibit massive greed and who resist any attempt to get them to pay their fare share and basically anything that will cost them a dime. And policy-makers have basically obliged them by making it easier and easier to get wealthier, the wealthier you are, and harder and harder to get wealthy if you aren't already. This makes no sense.

One autistic person who was certainly not favored by capitalism was Nickolai Tesla, who was jerked around and cheated by Thomas Edison, and left high and dry by others more astute in the ways of the free market. As I recall, the man who was one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century died impoverished in a tiny apartment.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Is it jealousy or self-pity that drives people to attack the wealthy and systems that allow and encourage people to become wealthy?

I think it's both.

The promise of wealth is what drives innovation, invention, and investment. Take away the promise of wealth, and watch progress stagnate. Some people look at this promise and say, "That's for me!" and go to work on it; while others look at the promise and whine that it has not already been delivered before the work is done.

The former get wealthy, while the latter remain poor.

So the wealthy people, having discovered how easy it is to gain wealth through their own efforts, keep accumulating wealth; while the poor people, seeing that the wealth is not being shared with them for doing nothing, criticize the system as "unfair" and wealthy people for being "greedy".

And life goes on...