Actually, what's interesting is how, although the claim is that no punctuation is used, paragraphs are used in substitute of sentences. So, in essence, it is still broken down into sentences. However, I agree that it is not unreasonable to expect that text should be formatted in a way that it is easily understandable.

I just don't bother reading the posts at all. If you're not going to make the effort, why should I?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

And there we have The-Proof-Is-In-The-Pudding explanation. It simply does not work.

Income redistribution based on perceived need works only to a certain degree. A bit of redistribution via taxes and programs that take care of those that are not taking care of themselves (avoiding the issue of why that is) is tolerated. Outright leveling of assets is proven not to work. The "real" economy governed by natural forces of supply and demand simply moves underground.

Not only that, but the usually totalitarian regimes that have tried such silliness never impose the leveling on themselves; demonstrating another axiom - that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Funny, yesterday there was a cartoon linked on the Neil's Nuze webpage, I believe it was ZackHill. A child in a grade school classroom is basically saying the same thing. It's no fair that there are ultra rich people and poor people. We should take from the rich and give to the poor. The teacher congratulates her on her excellent effort and informs her that since a classmate didn't do as well she would be combining their grades and giving them both B's. 'Hey, you can't do that! I worked hard on that paper.' exclaims the student. 'Yes, and you just negated your point.' was the teachers response.

Try learning economics from someone that isn't a confirmed communist first. It ain't perfect, but capitalism works one heck of a lot better than anything else. In fact, it's only real problem is greedy people.

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TIME Man of the Year

A great deal of the problems people point to in the US, with certain companies becoming very large and almost monopolistic or where they claim that CEO's or others high up in companies have too much power is not necessarily a problem inherent to capitalism.

This would be more of a problem of said companies using lobying or other unfair practices to maintain their positions. An executive who is being paid more than (s)he is worth needs to get the boot from the stockholders.

I'd define myself as something of a Teddy Roosevelt-esq. Business is good and big business is good because it provides lots of jobs and economic activity. However, companies must play by the same rules as anyone else. No special treatment and no more loopholes in buisiness and contract law or tax regulations. If you're a big company and do well, more power to you, but if you start playing dirty or trying to eliminate competition unfairly, the government should come down on you like a ton of bricks.

Speak for yourself, Buddy. I could pay for my house in the first two years on the interest alone (assuming normal return on bonds, and after taxes), then thereafter maintain my house indefinitely (heat, utilities, taxes, insurance) on that same interest, with enough left over to cover my car insurance (and probably the lease as well), without ever touching that million.

I could almost retire on that single million, living modestly but comfortably.

(I computed the numbers for kicks a while back.)

It all depends on where you live.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

yes! I wish that more people understood that. People should actually read books about communism - **not theory books** The theory is great, especially if you are an ant or a bumblebee. But it doesn't work in practice with (large groups of) humans. It seems to me that people get so caught up on the theory when they just read Marx that they gloss over this tiny little detail: it doesn't actually work with anything larger than ten people.

And you know what, they never even intended to. They never even promised to! But people supported them anyway, knowing they would be totalitarian because Marx actually said that you have to go through a totalitarian phase! Talk about being set up for failure! Stalin called people who actually believed in communism "useful idiots." And now we have people going through school in the US and apparently being trained to be useful idiots. Amazing.

I can get $100,000 a year real return out of a million. Even a conservative 8% real return gives $80,000 a year. I think most people could manage to live off that.

Yeah, even staying relatively conservative you could easily generate $50 to $100K per year. My mutuals have returned an average of 12% over the last 10 years being invested in a good mix of 1/4 aggressive and 3/4 in low to mild risk. Any decent mixed fund not returning at least 5% over even the mid-term is a loser. Some of the aggressive stuff, even in these supposed tougher times, is averaging over 15% per year over 5 years. I do not even try to time the market, just invest in the funds recommended by established analysts.

As far as knowing enough of the basics to not ask these kinds of questions; I sympathize a good amount with the original poster. I was never exposed to any serious economics learnings until college. There were no such offerrings in my high school, and I never thought to explore it on my own.

After taking an intro course in college I became so fascinated by it I added it as a 2nd minor. Just realizing it was a behavioral science was an eye-opener for me. I still have one of the beginner textbooks on my shelf (History of Economic Thought?) and peruse passages for kicks and giggles when I have a few minutes to kill.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Mmm, yeah, but I'm worst-casing the investment scenario. a) I'm far too inexperienced to be speculating with real money. I'm a fish and I know this from pretty harsh past experience. b) I'm naturally risk adverse in any case, so that necessarily limits my investment options. I'm assuming a very safe 7%. c) I'd be paying roughly half of that return in income tax without setting up shelters. And you need a lot more than a million dollars to do that.

So basically, what I'm saying is that knowing my current costs and needs, I could own my home and retire instantly (sans family) on a mere $35,000 CDN a year. More than comfortably if I delayed my retirement by two years and first payed off the mortgage. I'd even be able to gradually grow that investment. There'd be plenty left over once the mortgage was paid.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

Can't remember the author, and I think it has been posted here before, but bears repeating.

Capitalism is where man takes advantage of his fellow man. Communism is the other way around.

Or something close to that.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

This would completely remove any incentive for the average person to try to better themselves. Why should I go out and work my butt off 12 hours a day, 6 days a week at some job with minimum upward mobility if i can just work as a delivery driver at pizza hut and get paid minimum wage to drive around and listen to the radio in my car all day while waiting for my monthly checks to come in from Bill Gates and Warren buffet?

I have heard a lot of plans over the years to "redistribute the wealth" from the rich to the poor and the one thing that none of them have ever considered is this: Why are the poor people poor?

Look at the average lottery winner and you'll discover that about 90% of them were worse off a few year after winning millions then they were to begin with. Why?

When Warren Buffet thinks about a million dollars he is thinking about the investment opportunities that million dollars can open up for him. He thinks about how he can make that million dollars work for him. When your average joe blow lower or middle class person who barely makes ends meet thinks about a million dollars, they think about a new set of 24's for the escalade they would buy and the new 10,000 Square foot house and paying off thier credit card debit and new $10,000 sterio systems for the fleet of cars they would buy.

Redistibution of wealth doesn't work unless you first teach the people you are redistributing the wealth too how to handle the money you are about to give to them. Of course, if you do that you wouldn't need to redistribute the wealth because the people would know how to get rich themselves.

Real world economics is one area where I feel that our school systems are really failing us now-a-days.

Well It´s not that simple. The road to richness is bumpy, and even many a rich people admit having had a good luck. And I don´t think the 'robber barons' of the early capitalism were as noble as Warren Buffet.

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If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

Okay, here's what you do. Take a newspaper pages with the stockmarket figures and pin it to the wall. Throw darts until you have selected 30 stocks. Invest your money in those stocks. Spend 8% of the total amount of money you have invested each year and on averge the total you have invested should increase year by year. (It kind of sucks if the market falls 30% the day after you buy your shares, but hey, 8% of $700,000 is still $56,000.) I don't know what taxes are like where you live, but if they are anything like in Australia they should be pretty low without any need for shelters.

Or you could just invest the money in an index fund. But then you don't get to throw darts.

Yes indeedy. Poverty, like underdevelopment, is a process - not a status. And it is a process that is enabled by bad policy that keeps getting worse. Economic problems do not lend themselves very well to political solutions.

EDIT: It is like sending in a marshmallow to put out a bonfire.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Did I make my money through luck? Yes I did. I made my money by being a complete nut. Was I lucky to be born a complete nut? For much of my life I'd have to say the answer was definitely no.

I was left with crippling debt that took a bit over five years to clear when a large US defense contractor decided they were too big for me to take to court (and they were right) after they stiffed me for my portion of a subcontract. They got paid for my work. I didn't.

My share was worth about a third of my yearly income at the time. Roughly half what I make now in a year. I lost my home as a result.

Two years prior, another CEO I worked for pulled an Enron-style stock scam on his employees, only on a smaller scale. That also wiped out a significant portion of my fledgling retirement savings.

Some of the poor are poor because some of the rich are crooks who routinely get away with this sort of thing.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

Any income over $60,000/year is taxed somewhere in the 40%-50% range, IIRC. (Not that I pay enough attention to that tax bracket to be especially sure.) But when you're rich enough, there are plenty of shelters and deductions. The richest basically shelter their money in Bermuda, where they get away with paying no income tax (yet still receive our benefits.)

__________________
In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.