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Huge 20-Year Study Shows Trickle-Down Is a Myth, Inequality

Discussions about the economic and financial ramifications of PEAK OIL

Re: Huge 20-Year Study Shows Trickle-Down Is a Myth, Inequal

Unread postby mousepad » Wed 15 Dec 2021, 16:56:00

theluckycountry wrote:The rich don't come from Mars. They are often average people who have risen out of the muck and now enjoy the benefits of their superior intelligence, or luck, or dogged hard work. This is the whole ethos of America is it not?


Not according to the woke Ds. It's all because of white privilege, baby. /sarc
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Re: Huge 20-Year Study Shows Trickle-Down Is a Myth, Inequal

Unread postby Pops » Wed 15 Dec 2021, 18:04:13

mousepad wrote:
Pops wrote:Simply paying an equitable wage is all that's required, which they seem too greedy to do without coercion.

I don't like that, because it's not the free market doing the bidding.

But you just said force them to give away stock, or cap their size, or be break them up.
Those are all coercion and not "free market" in the least, actually they seem worse because they are all punishing the successes. What is it about paying a good wage as a general rule that constitutes coercion but forcing breakups and share giveaways isn't?
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Re: Huge 20-Year Study Shows Trickle-Down Is a Myth, Inequal

Unread postby Pops » Wed 15 Dec 2021, 18:12:58

mousepad wrote:
AdamB wrote:So what is your plan for keeping low level labor valuable, without it being an artificial construct?


Good question. I would start with not importing millions of low level workers.

Actually the point where labor's share of profitability disengaged from efficiency was when TENs of millions of women entered the workforce in the 1960s and 70s. They were paid lots less than men for the same work. But they are now increasingly much better educated and so taking over better positions and leaving the menfolk behind.

Just another thing to stick in those uneducated men's craw.
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Re: Huge 20-Year Study Shows Trickle-Down Is a Myth, Inequal

Unread postby Pops » Wed 15 Dec 2021, 18:45:11

theluckycountry wrote:So the rich get all the wealth?

Social Security costs, $1.151 trillion
Medicare ($722 billion)
Medicaid ($448 billion)

Food stamps, Unemployment Compensation, Child Nutrition, Child Tax Credits, Supplemental Security Income, Student Loans, Retirement and disability programs for civil servants, the Coast Guard, and the military. ($645 billion)


Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment, government pensions to a point are all paid for by the recipients. Whether they are appropriately funded is another story. The US military, including pensions is a bloated boondoggle, I know because my SIL a first Sergeant, tells me so.

Food stamps expect a family to spend 30% of income on food, 2/3 are old, kids or disabled of the rest most ARE employed, making pissant wages. They get $130 a month on average. Many work for Walmart and Mcdonalds,

The rich don't come from Mars. They are often average people who have risen out of the muck and now enjoy the benefits of their superior intelligence, or luck, or dogged hard work. This is the whole ethos of America is it not?

Back when America was great there was class mobility.
No more.

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Much has to do with AI that picks job applicants and automatically rejects those without a degree even when none is required. Obviously we all know how hard parent's work, cheat, bribe to get their kids in good schools. School loans are the fastest growing credit bubble—college is such a huge scam that trump even tried to get a piece.

All this churn is because there is just too many people trying for too few jobs, and it is gonna get worse. And guess who is going to suffer the most? Yep, uneducated rural people, the Ds with degrees in the cities are doing just fine. It is the folks in the hinterlands that vote for the billionaires who turn around and eat their lunch.

Crap, no wonder they are offing themselves

Music to off yourself by
.
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
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Re: Huge 20-Year Study Shows Trickle-Down Is a Myth, Inequal

Unread postby Plantagenet » Wed 15 Dec 2021, 18:53:49

mousepad wrote:
Plantagenet wrote:How about actually BUYING shares of the corporations?

Yes, that's an option. However I think certain companies and shareholders are too powerful for societies good. Pile of Sugar a good example (Zuckerberg is german and means "mountain of sugar").
I believe he should not own that large of a sugar pile.
But then again, I'm an armchair dude, just thinking out loud and trying to solve societies ills one beer at a time. Cheers.

What do you think?


I agree that some companies are too big and this isn't good for society. Personally, I really dislike FACEBOOK and I've never ever joined it.

In fact I would expect that just about everyone out there can agree that giant evil corporations are too powerful and the worst of the evil corporations are the ones that have effective monopolies, like Zuckerberg and Facebook.

However, if you're investing in evil corporations and trying to hitch a ride and earn a little money for yourself from their evilness, then the very best evil corporations to invest in are the ones that have monopolies because those are the ones that are going to grow and grow and grow and make the most money.....and that means their stock will go up and all the millions of little people who own their stock will also benefit.

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netscape, Amazon all have what amount to monopolies over certain things, and they all make a lot of money and they all are growing the amount they make. That makes them probably the best targets to invest in if you want to invest in evil corporations in the stock market and make money for yourself.

This is a widely held idea.....these stocks are known collectively as the FANG stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Netscape, Google) in the investing world. They've been amazing investments to hold....and you can even buy them all bundled together in various ETF funds.

I'm not disagreeing with you that they are horribly evil and destructive corporations.....I'm just saying that in spite of that (or because of that) they are great investments and its been a good bet to own these stocks in order to help yourself make a bit of extra money in this evil capitalist world we find ourselves living in.

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The evil capitalist monopolist corporations are evil evil evil....but looking at things logically its also true that they've been darn good investments over the last decade

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Re: Huge 20-Year Study Shows Trickle-Down Is a Myth, Inequal

Unread postby Doly » Thu 16 Dec 2021, 17:25:21

I'm not disagreeing with you that they are horribly evil and destructive corporations.....I'm just saying that in spite of that (or because of that) they are great investments and its been a good bet to own these stocks in order to help yourself make a bit of extra money in this evil capitalist world we find ourselves living in.


The problem with stocks is that they have become something they weren't at the beginning. Back in the 19th century, the idea is that many investors would be activist investors, that is, if they had moral objections to how a company was run, they would not invest in that company. Also, there were much better opportunities to be activist investors and actually change how the company was run. But gradually, companies de-fanged the rules so that they could do whatever they liked and it would be much harder for activist investors to change anything. Owning stock used to mean much greater responsibility on how the company was run that it means today. Maybe those rules need to come back.
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Re: Huge 20-Year Study Shows Trickle-Down Is a Myth, Inequal

Unread postby Plantagenet » Thu 16 Dec 2021, 18:16:00

Doly wrote:Back in the 19th century, the idea is that many investors would be activist investors, that is, if they had moral objections to how a company was run, they would not invest in that company. Also, there were much better opportunities to be activist investors and actually change how the company was run. But gradually, companies de-fanged the rules so that they could do whatever they liked and it would be much harder for activist investors to change anything. Owning stock used to mean much greater responsibility on how the company was run that it means today. Maybe those rules need to come back.


I think you've got that backwards.

The whole idea of the "activist investor" is a modern invention and there is much more recognition of the opportunities to be a "moral" investor now then there ever were in the 19th century.

For instance, investors in oil companies like Exxon, Mobil and Chevron have recently mounted successful campaigns to get those companies to adopt new policies to help mitigate climate change. And you have to be a stockholder to participate in these debates within these large oil companies.

activist-investor-exxon-mobil-oil-climate

Other activist investors choose to invest in solar or wind or nuclear energy to help support renewable low carbon energy sources. In our modern capitalist world concerned citizens can support what they think is "moral" with their dollars by buying those companies in the stock market. And good things can done even in the most "evil" corporation because once people own shares they can continue to be activists within the company by joining activists groups of shareholders and supporting what they believe to be "moral" initiatives and policies for the companies.

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Re: Huge 20-Year Study Shows Trickle-Down Is a Myth, Inequal

Unread postby Doly » Fri 17 Dec 2021, 14:39:36

The whole idea of the "activist investor" is a modern invention


Tell that to the grave of Isaac Le Maire, the man that broke the monopoly of the Dutch East India Company. The idea that investors would attempt to change a public company if they were unhappy with how it was run was part of the concept of their corporate governance from the beginning.

Unfortunately, we live in a Brave New World where we are told that everything today is better than in the past, and many people believe it, even though it's demonstrably not true. My grandparents picked stocks and they picked them taking into account the information they had about how "serious" the company was, and for their generation, it was common to do exactly that. Today, it's rare the common investor that picks stocks for any reason whatsoever, and when they do, it's almost always purely financial considerations, not of any other sort.
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Re: Huge 20-Year Study Shows Trickle-Down Is a Myth, Inequal

Unread postby Plantagenet » Fri 17 Dec 2021, 18:13:37

Doly wrote:
.... "activist investor" ....

Tell that to the grave of Isaac Le Maire, the man that broke the monopoly of the Dutch East India Company. The idea that investors would attempt to change a public company if they were unhappy with how it was run was part of the concept of their corporate governance from the beginning.


First of all, you are very welcome to talk to all the graves you want if thats how you want to spend your time, but I'm not going to waste my time on something that bizarre.

Second, Isaac le Maire was not an "activist investor" in the modern sense of the word. Isaac le Maire was initially the LARGEST INVESTOR in the East India Company and he was also the GOVERNOR of the Dutch East India Company. That means that he owned a controlling interest in the Dutch East India Company and he was actually playing a big role in running the company while he was the Governor of the corporation. Isaac le Maire was the quintessential corporate insider....at least initially......and thats not what an activist investor means in today's world.

So what does the term "activist investor" mean today? Today there are two types of people who are considered activist investors and they are both outsiders who want to change the direction of the company. The first are people who buy shares to try to take over a company. These people often think the current management is doing a poor job running the business and they could do better.

Second, the term activist investor is used for people who are trying to modify some corporate policy for moral reasons. Rather then owning a majority of shares and directly controlling the company and/or being a corporate insider who is actually running the company, this variety of modern activist investors are typically small shareholders (some only buy one share) who are to exert moral influence over the company by introducing corporate resolutions for the rest of the shareholders to vote on.

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This second type of corporate activism has been increasing rapidly in recent years.....and this was the sense in which I was using the term


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Re: Huge 20-Year Study Shows Trickle-Down Is a Myth, Inequal

Unread postby evilgenius » Sun 19 Dec 2021, 10:04:05

Plantagenet wrote:
mousepad wrote:
Plantagenet wrote:How about actually BUYING shares of the corporations?

Yes, that's an option. However I think certain companies and shareholders are too powerful for societies good. Pile of Sugar a good example (Zuckerberg is german and means "mountain of sugar").
I believe he should not own that large of a sugar pile.
But then again, I'm an armchair dude, just thinking out loud and trying to solve societies ills one beer at a time. Cheers.

What do you think?


I agree that some companies are too big and this isn't good for society. Personally, I really dislike FACEBOOK and I've never ever joined it.

In fact I would expect that just about everyone out there can agree that giant evil corporations are too powerful and the worst of the evil corporations are the ones that have effective monopolies, like Zuckerberg and Facebook.

However, if you're investing in evil corporations and trying to hitch a ride and earn a little money for yourself from their evilness, then the very best evil corporations to invest in are the ones that have monopolies because those are the ones that are going to grow and grow and grow and make the most money.....and that means their stock will go up and all the millions of little people who own their stock will also benefit.

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netscape, Amazon all have what amount to monopolies over certain things, and they all make a lot of money and they all are growing the amount they make. That makes them probably the best targets to invest in if you want to invest in evil corporations in the stock market and make money for yourself.

This is a widely held idea.....these stocks are known collectively as the FANG stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Netscape, Google) in the investing world. They've been amazing investments to hold....and you can even buy them all bundled together in various ETF funds.

I'm not disagreeing with you that they are horribly evil and destructive corporations.....I'm just saying that in spite of that (or because of that) they are great investments and its been a good bet to own these stocks in order to help yourself make a bit of extra money in this evil capitalist world we find ourselves living in.

Image
The evil capitalist monopolist corporations are evil evil evil....but looking at things logically its also true that they've been darn good investments over the last decade

CHEERS!


You know, your sense of humor has so much more impact when it is used like this, to point something out which is a commonly held tactic for dealing with uncertainty rather than to make a political assertion. You are good at it.
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Re: Huge 20-Year Study Shows Trickle-Down Is a Myth, Inequal

Unread postby Doly » Sun 19 Dec 2021, 16:04:44

Neither buying shares in order to change the direction of a public company or to introduce resolutions in order to vote on them are recent developments.

The evidence suggests that activist investors, in the broad sense I use the term, which is investors that take into account other factors than purely financial ones and will act to change corporate governance if they are unhappy with it, were the norm in the early 19th century. "Corporation nation" by R. E. Wright makes that argument in great detail.
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Re: Huge 20-Year Study Shows Trickle-Down Is a Myth, Inequal

Unread postby Plantagenet » Sun 19 Dec 2021, 19:26:18

evilgenius wrote:You know, your sense of humor has so much more impact when it is used like this.....You are good at it.


Thank you.

I also enjoy your posts. You are an intelligent and knowledgeable commentator on an amazingly wide range of issues.

For the most part we've got a pretty good group of posters active here at peak oil right now. I used to miss the old days when we had hundreds of active posters here, but I've grown to appreciate the current small group of posters who are still active here. There are still a few bad ones but most of the people posting tend to have something interesting, informative or funny to say.

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Here's a big THANKS to those posters who have the wit to post interesting things.......I appreciate it!

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