It's hard to believe that we have someone this dumb on this forum.
First, we do not live in a Democracy, we are suppose to be a Republic.
I am not sure you know what a Republic is, but since you are such a
brilliant soul, maybe you can look it up.
Kalifornia is more of the type government of which you speak. And look
what a wonderful position they hold in the world as we speak. They are
bankrupt in everyway you can mention.
I didn't have to look it up, simply because I already knew the concept.
The link given was to simply provide a readily-verifiable source data, so that anyone who wanted to, including you, could find the answer for themselves.
It hardly takes a genius to search google.com for the term "GDP equation", but thanks.
Was that $110 billion in 1967 dollars? or $110 billion in 1990 dollars?
You haven't Google'd it already?
It is your statistic.
Are you saying you presented it without doing any critical thinking?
If you can't answer the question, does that mean that I should assume you are wrong? i.e. "mute genius" as you put it?
Last edited by RandomGuy; 04-15-2010 at 01:20 PM.
Since you asked, I didn't google your factoid specifically, as I didn't know the source.
Assuming that your source or you ed up on the Time Value of Money concept, I did look up inflation in that period, and calculated what $110bn in 1990 would have been worth in 1967.
According to inflation.com, $110 billion dollars in 1990 would have been $28 billion in 1967. (calculated by indexing average inflation in each year after 1967, including 1990)
Given that we are missing an important set of data, i.e. if an expansion of benefits occurred in that period of time, it is hard to say if their estimate was really far off.
It relates rather directly to the topic at hand.Ok, so what? What does it MEAN? How does it relate to wealth inequality?
That's why I posted the Drake equation in your other thread. Has absolutely nothing to do with the subject.
Did I ever say I knew more than you about accounting? I know you are an accountant. You should go work for the CBO. They have an army of number-crunchers that are NEVER PROVEN WRONG BY REALITY.
Ff you give $100,000,000 to people who tend to be wealthier, and they will be more likely to invest in existing assets, this therefore does not expand GDP more than, say, giving $100,000,000 to people in lower income brackets, who would be much more likely to actually spend that money, an activity that DOES spur GDP.
Shift tax burden to the rich, and you get higher GDP.
This becomes quite the argument for making the income tax MORE progressive, not less.
the intention of the framers and what we are now are not one in the same. yes, we have elected officials who represent us but we also have ballot referendums which are clearly not what the framers such as madison had in mind when setting up our "republic". also, the two forms of government are not mutually exclusive. we have a republic that is very disimilar to the roman republic (theoretically at least) in that we were constructed in a fashion that was meant to avoid the election of nobles only and an oligarchy as a result. in that sense, we are really more or a representative democracy. references to town hall meetings and tea parties are direct references to a democracy and not a republic. the creation of the cons ution itself may have been a reaction against democracy, but the dominant trend over the last two centuries has been to make our government into a representative democracy.
so even if the framers were not about democracy, the people already were. the demands of the people to vote were taken into consideration by the framers and this is why they wrote several anti-democratic provisions into the cons ution. the senate was not to be elected directly by the people; the president was not to be directly elected by the voters, and the supreme court was to be appointed. and more importantly to the "is this a democracy-versus-republic debate", the cons ution left the question of who could vote in elections to each individual state. so the first federal government that met in 1789 was a republic with only an iota of democratic representation. this is what people mean today when they say America is a republic, not a democracy (when not parroting the cliche du jour that is). the fact is that the passage of the 17th ammendment essentially made us a representative democracy.
as to your latter point, your antecedent leaves me at an impasse. is the "government of which [i] speak" the quasi-democracy you have implied the rest of the united states is not, or is it the corporate based oligarchy that we have since become under the banner of neoliberal policies ?
Look at DarrinS busting out the Chewbacca defense over the more traditional Youtube defense.
Nice analogy.
(coffee)
I think I just read someone's high school paper on government.
Your statement: "but we also have ballot referendums" is absolute
incorrect. Only in some states. None in Texas. None at the Federal Level.
Your observation on election of the President was to stop the more
populated states from having undue influence in electing the President.
But corporate based influence, I might ask: who makes up the corporation?
I would say people who buy the shares. I would also ask, who creates
wealth? Not government, but business. The producers. Producers also
include workers, who profit and invest in their own companies.
Wow. You have a lot of free time to waste. No, the House Means and Ways Committee didn't ignore interest or inflation. Good to know that you think you're the only one that understands the ooooh so complex "time value of money" concept. Again -- big hat, no cattle.
http://texaslegislativeupdate.wordpr...ion-voter-i-d/
i guess texas doesn't elect senators either.
I stand corrected rjv, my intent was that the "people" in Texas or at the Federal level
cannot have placed or enacted a law by ballot. As in California.
In Texas the voter can only approve or reject a Cons utional amendment, which in Texas,
our amendments are larger than the original Cons ution. Or express their "wishes" on
an issue. In respect to your link, it might help you to know they were talking about
the April primary election, which is for the election of the parties canidates and their
party platform. So it really has no real meaning on what will be passed into law.
Wealth inequality is an unfortunate side-effect of the US political and economic system. Let's perform a simple thought experiment.
Let's say I built a system (a technology based business) that provides all of man's basic needs at an extraordinarily low cost. This technology provides food, energy, clothing, information, entertainment, etc at a much higher quality than comparable alternatives, and at a much lower cost. Let's also suppose that the entire manpower needed to run this system is based out of a low-cost outsourcing destination like India or China.
What would happen if I were to deploy this system? People would switch to this option because it would be a no-brainer in terms of value/cost. All other businesses would have to shut down, everybody else would lose their jobs. All income would be concentrated towards my firm which operates this system. This would result in an extreme case of income and wealth inequality.
At this point, do you think people accept living without any source of income, even though I would have legally built a business that would essentially concentrate all income towards me? The answer is obviously "No". The whole situation would be unsustainable. New laws (uncons utional ones, by the way) will have to be created to dismantle my business for the greater good of the country.
That example was an extreme scenario of what is happening on a smaller scale today. Wealth and income have become concentrated due to automation, outsourcing and a political/legal framework which is aimed at helping big businesses and wealthy individuals.
Some day, a critical inflexion point will be reached when the "have-nots" would rather fight to dismantle the current system rather than suffer under it.
Well I hate to tell you but free enterprise did do exactly what you described
in the first paragraph above. What made things expensive? Government,
what made things like water scarce, government. What made energy
expensive, government. Who is still trying to cause scarcity and
rationing, government. You name a problem we have today and I can
guarantee that government has caused it through their actions. So
don't blame business, they work within the framework.
Way to miss my point altogether. Do you see any mention of government intervention at any point in my imaginary example? My point was that even the free market framework can cause acute wealth inequality under the right (wrong?) cir stances
Talking about missing a point.........
"Well I hate to tell you but free enterprise did do exactly what you described
in the first paragraph above."
Government intervention destroyed the the system that was created
by business. And what damn "acute wealth inquality"
^^ I don't think anybody can be this dumb, so you're probably trolling me. I give up.
^^I think you already have with post like the last two......sheeeesh!
I'm sorry, but I literally LOL each time I see Darrin mocking the use of an equation to get the GDP.
WTF did he think the GDP was?
I wish I was like you
Easily amused
Find my nest of salt
Everything is my fault
I'll take all the blame
aqua seafoam shame
Condescending and self-pitying in the same breath? Seems to fit.
All I asked was for some source for your stats, so I could figure out for myself what to think about it.
People like you simply ape disinenguous lies all the time through sheer ignorance, so I am forced to do this.
You read some thing somewhere that says "look they thought medicare would only cost X in 1990, but it was really 11 times that" in order to make the argument "all en lements spiral really wildly out of control, so they must be stopped".
"time value of money" is simply a way of accounting for inflation. It isn't all that fancy.
Not allowing for inflation is one of the oldest tricks in the book for lying with statistics, especially when it comes to politics.
That you don't know to look for it says to me that you get lied to all the time and don't know it.
Do you actually have source link for your previous statment?
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